THE TOWER OF SILENCE(ENGLISH TRANSLATION,BY THE AUTHOR)
by Kassandra Gauthier
Summary: This is a simple chain of facts,Reid. An invitation for to join him in a desolated island,an old mansion,the sound of the piano,the one hundred three orchids disposed in circle.. The character of a man is his own destiny.
1. Chapter 1

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THE TOWER OF SILENCE (English translation,by the Author)

FIRST PART: CHAPTER I: PRELUDE

In the misty morning there was a slate-coloured sea, and the birds were away: it was a late autumn.

The letter shook once more in those white ivory hands, beneath the tapered ,slightly frayed fingers .

"About twenty minutes of drive from Saint Malo" ...

The car was rocking on a road not very accustomed to motor vehicle traffic, while the driver was humming a silly tune , drawn ,perhaps,from an old vaudeville long time forgotten.

It felt moisture seeped even his soul, leaving aside his bones ,that ached horribly.

In the harbour there was a small boat, old, faded, waiting for the few passersby who came to the place at that time of the year advanced.

The rains had flooded the passage he could have taken (and he would have been preferred) for to do a dry walk to the Grand Bé . The tiny island (almost an islet )looked like a metaphor of abandonment and solitude.

"He has not even presented himself in the hotel," he thought ... and then dismissed the idea of preparing a summary of the shameful episode starring Sartre ,involving that well known nasty urinary feat.

Involuntarily ,he smiled.

In minutes, the helpless island with those memorial stones came into view,surrounded by the cruel light of that sudden early winter morning..

Within minutes, he stood in that strangely alien soil, feeling himself almost absurd ...

The man was silent,backwards. An immeasurable sadness ,larger than silence, surrounded the figure, not too high but still slender, clad in a long dark coat.

He did not smile, nor held out his hand.

-Reid ...- he muttered –I knew you'd come ...

-Gideon- the other almost whispered ...-How have you been all this time?

- _" La vie me sied mal; la mort m'ira peut-être mieux."…(The life I've done gave me wrong:perhaps death may treat me better)._ Gideon said,_ pointing to that undated and unnamed tomb._

_ And he continued:_

_-My mother's family, of French origins, had a small village in Combourg, a locality near Saint Malo._

When I retired from active duty, I decided to return the inheritance of my maternal grandmother. So,I ended up in that distant corner, not so far from the sea, not so far from the ports that have always been my obsession.

I've always been a loner, a solitary,and you know it very well. "

…..

(Ville d'Autrémont, Combourg :half an hour later.)

After a detailed enumeration of the complete works of Chateaubriand, and the usual allusion to Sartre's absurdly animalistic gesture urinating on his grave, after discussing whether the famous secret meeting between George Washington and the poet actually took place, or whether it was only a legend, after carefully analyzing the alleged cult to a Semitic deity called Yemo (apparently religious icon of the poet's family), Spencer Reid could see that the dark eyes in front of him had been lit.

The Combourg house, huge, ramshackle, was already retaining, however, the traces of its noble past.

Gideon seemed to be very happy with it, and with his household servants,, Monsieur and Madame Dutertre, who addressed him as if he were a feudal lord.

Reid never have suspected that Gideon's mother had belonged to the French nobility :provincial nobility,in this case rather poor and obscure, but still aristocratic, at any rate.

After the coffee and the lively conversation, it came the chess game, which reminded him of the old days.;

the fire in the fireplace, and, of course, the piano: Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Grieg, Liszt (in his transcriptions of Wagner) and even (it did not seem strange at all this last election), La Cathédrale engloutie , of Debussy.

Gideon taught him some samples of historical records that he had bought on his arrival in France: disks of seventy-eight revolutions per minute (time for a mathematical analysis of this ), and huge vinyls, "thirty three revolutions, as the degrees of Freemasonry, "Gideon said, laughing.

Then, it was time for the main question:why did he make him come here?

Perchance…he was thinking of a possible return?-….

'-Never!'- Gideon said when Reid suggested the possibility, even remote-That world is dead to me.

Reid didn't insist.

Schubert (it was his impromptu in C minor) sounded over and over again, repeatedly, played by the hands of Edwin Fischer ... The "hiss" hiss "of old hard disk was stabbing the silence ,in the meanwhile their faces were lit by fire and by the clear caramel reflections ,dancing in the huge glasses of cognac.

-P lus la saison est triste, plus elle est en rapport avec moi

(The more sad is the season,it becomes the most related to me). –Gideon whispered.

No, definitely ,he did not have the slightest idea of what he had come to do there.

Surprisingly, Gideon asked:

-And ... how they've been?

Reid took a breath, bit her lower lip to muster the needed value for to tell the truth (he was not fond of lying, incidentally), and began his story, which sought to make brief, relying on a possible digression of his inveterate rhetoric,and attempting to do not let it to betray the same thread of the discourse::

-Well. Aaron got his divorce, finally, and he is now holding his young son, with such bad luck that the former wife died of myeloid leukemia just six months later, perhaps as a result of the brutal attack of a serial murderer, who undertook a time when we all had our guard too low .. Aaron hasn't married again...Our new general supervisor(you probably already knew him), Davide Rossi, is an Italian gentleman with stoic temperament and a recalcitrant epicureistic taste:he seems to be obsessive, ordered,very ordered,but , sometimes explosive, simulates he is always taking the control :but it is evident to me that he does all of this for to be convinced himself.. Jennifer gave birth to a beautiful child, and returned some time with her husband. Then ,she returned to work in the office. Emily seems more petrified than ever. Pleasantly Morgan continues as cheesy as ever, and his eternal love, Penelope, it is not so "eternal", because she is engaged to a young spectacled colleague, whom is more the type of the informatic psychopath .His name is Kevin,and he works two floors up.

That's all. I think I was short enough,and also very concise –Spencer smiled, and concluded, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, like drawing pictures in the air.

-All the concise you can be , my dear Reid.

Gideon kept the silence. Suddenly ,he fired the question:

-And ... what about you?

Reid swallowed. He feared the question, because he already knew that it was addressed to his well established (and never hidden) passion for opiates and morphine.

-I am always working,-he said,-and ,when it allows me, visiting my mother.

-Do you live alone, yet?

-Yes, of course I have not married .. -

("Not what I intended, or ever think". He had wanted to add this, but he stopped).

-Not that's what I meant ...

Those terrible,digging soul black eyes, so vigorously passionate, were fixed on his.

Gideon lit a cigar, after giving one to his young guest, who refused closely with an almost contemptuous gesture , while seeking for his American cigarettes ,that ( he remembered) he had removed from the backpack when he was out of the car ,in the island, without actually light any .

-Chessmate -said the voice,that dry, colourless voice , pushing gently with his calloused finger the ivory white king.

Reid sighed. ("It has been and will be always the same!",he thought)

After midnight it began to Dutertre accompanied him to his room, that was severely obscure,but furnished, however, with good taste: there were many books (mainly in French), a fireplace with fire in full, a huge window looking to the chateau, which could clearly distinguish the famous Tour du Chat, Cat Tower, where Chateaubriand used to sleep during the days of his childhood and early youth, perhaps interacting with the supposed specter of the dead animal,a legend that lasted for centuries.

He smiled, showing to himself his own atmosphere seemed taken from a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe.

His mind flew in search of the accounting records of paranormal phenomena observed in places like this.

("Of a total of 358 cases observed and recorded during the years 2007.2008 ... etc. .. until 2012, the 87.88 percent of them turned out to be susceptible of a logical explanation and / or natural." ,he rambled about his favourite subject,statistics)

Those moisture stains on the wall ...

He lay on his back with his arms folded behind his didn't unclothe.. It felt cold, despite the fire burning,. relentless, implacable, in the huge fireplace.

It smelled of sandalwood and laudanum, roses and oblivion, old books and solitude.

("Why I have done to come up here? He still has not talked about it ...")

Sleepless and restless, his thoughts flew to Hanckel, reaching the murky tank in which he was tortured, tormented, stigmatized with his own demons made flesh in his flesh.

Incubi infamous ...

No, no one else was there that night ... and no one else was in the corridors of the silent mansion Gideon had chosen as a refuge.

(Hanckel whipped the soles of his feet a hundred, a thousand times in every wet spot on the wall that had before his eyes .. Meanwhile, the rain was raging against the black window.

He lit another cigarette, and searched ,in his backpack , for the Pravaz syringe, and the last bottle of morphine.

He pointed to his vein, squinting, was sweating profusely, despite the was trembling, wet, against the flames that were fiddling with their shadows on the skin of his face. Pale, haggard., with the black circles around his hazelnuts half dead eyes looking like two open gates to nowhere.

(Voice of First Ghost);

(-Ethan, please, enough ... enough ... enough!

-No, we are not finished, Spencer ... Undress ... do not be timid ... I want to see the tracks that so much death and crime have left in your body-...

-For pity!'We are no longer in high school ... It's not a game ... I suffer!)

(The Voice of the second Ghost)

"Hanckel brandished his hate, the wind was silent, eyes turned toward the orbits ...

! "

"((The Third Phantom's voice):

Morphine ….Damned morphine ! " )

(the fourth ghost whispers in the rain):

('I'm a drug addict, I'm gay, I'm a genius, as it could say Truman Capote. )

... ...

Two or three hours later, the wind ceased its plaintive ditty, and,all silent, water stains became almost dimensional, and the smell of the roses wrestled with laudanum, annihilating everything at once.

... ...

II

Andante with Variations

TOPIC: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD (somewhere in Appalachia, and is not spring)

VARIATION I:

-If you do not stop cheating, I'll bite your fact that you're a god of chocolate and cinnamon doesn't excuse you to cheat on us!- ... Penelope said, gesturing ,comically sulking.

-I don't cheat, wow!

There was only one simple shack in Appalachia, surrounded by woods, the smell of warm bread and the contesting card game for three.

At one point, when Kevin entered triumphantly carrying a large tray adorned with homemade bread, freshly baked, Morgan glanced to his cell phone, dumb, blind and deaf (these were the rules for the holiday week) lay at side, on a stool ...

_-And the next time you give a sneak peek at the damn phone, you will lose your nose, I promise!

Morgan laughed, but the dark feeling that he kept was still there, annoying, poking the peaceful rest, turning off the simple clarity of the friendly camaraderie of three.

VARIATION II:

(Where the North Pacific becomes an enemy)

(Fragments of a Secret Diary ,by Aaron Hotchner)

("Your hand is a morbid sleep that pushed my flesh tonight..Your eyes are that night I wanted to avoid.

You are me ,and I am you ... ... As Tristan, and who knows what kind of spell has inextricably linked your life to the mine.

What kind of filter did you give to me?

What kind of dark magic pays us for each other, facing the ridicule, the scorn, the contempt, and all that the world has been set as "politically incorrect"?)

-Aaron ...

-Say it , my angel

-This is like drinking from a glass that is bottomless ...

-Then ,let's die together -

( didn't want to die)

-No, Aaron! No ... let's live ... let's flee ... wherever ... but ... Let us live together, Aaron ...

….

(On the outskirts of Seattle, Washington State,

gardens of the Hotchner-Kohen's residence homestead )

-Dad ... dad! See what we have found with Uncle!

Aaron looked up, idly watching a blade of grass, and smiled at his son, against the wave of shame that rose to her face and tinged it with felt vividly as if the whole world knew his secret.

Mrs. Rebecca Hotchner-Kohen approached , smiling, with a tray in her hands

-Bravo ..! Now, lemonade for two!

_Thank you,, Mother .

-Hey, bove (grandmother)! Let no strudel with many nuts today?

The simple family life in his father's house, fishing in the lake next to the quiet shore, where the children played and laughed and chatted casually over ... almost a little paradise, which, however, he already could not enjoy.

(The phone is silent)

The black eyes soaked by sadness stroked the blond child's face .

_Go to play, Jakob ... Go now .. Play with your cousins ...

Rebeca Hotchner sat on the floor next to his eldest son.

-You are sad,-she said to him-Hayley's remembrances?

Aaron Hotchner sighed.

-'It's nothing, mother ... It will pass ... Is that our child has their very eyes, do you know? Blue and sad.

-Yes ,I know,my son... But you also look at the phone all the time, as if you were at the office.., You are in a vacation,now,, please ,scheinele (darling), remember it!Your little son, your brothers and nephews, and I ,I myself,too,…we need you, my son!.Al least for a little while !...

-Okay, mother.I promise!

…..

(Another fragment of the Aaron's unfinished diary)

("How I can promise something that I know I will not comply? Where were my sense of honour and my proverbial pride?")

("They were at your feet, like sad gifts to your were obscured by the night, were undone by the first touch of your hand")

... ...

... ...

THIRD VARIATION:

(Opera of Rome, Italy)

The Roman autumn night, slightly moist, fragrant (he could distinguish the smell of coffee, mixed with the wine of Castelli,and the violets) offered to his view a full moon, that,as a crowned empress, watched over the crowded streets.

There were couples , lovers, friends ... and also lonely ones passing by,showing a landscape of careless sensuality.

-Tomorrow morning, I will have the report .I already have requested it- Giulio Dall'Abaco was a secretary of the Roman quaestorship and also an amateur criminologist .He lit a cigarette, his hand pointing to the badge announcing the Verdi's Ernani at the gates of the Opera di Roma, and asked:

-Did you like the performance?

- "Ernani" is not among my favourite operas, but I agreed to come because you had invited me.

Giulio winced.

Both men were smoking silently for a while , until the secretary of the quaestorship finally proposed:

-Dai! Andiamo a cena in un Ristorante del Trastevere ... (Hey, let's go to dinner at a restaurant in Trastevere!) .. E poi, se vuoi ,andiamo a casa mia ... Ho un piccolo appartmento in Campo dei Fiori ... So che ti piacerá ... Ne vuoi, carissimo? (And then, if you want, come to my house ... I have a small apartment in Campo dei Fiori.I know you will like it! Do you want it, dear?)

David the same thing! What Mr. Secretary of the Roman quaestorship and amateur criminologist Giulio dall '  
Abaco wanted was to make him recite, representing them, the Thirty-three Lustful sonnets of Aretino.

He looked at his pocket watch, and then drew his cell was,however, banned,since he was in his vacation..

("But ... who the hell would think to take vacations in autumn?")

-I need that report as soon as possible, and I cannot entrust the Bureau, is confidential, almost personal ... When you get it, please, send it to France, urgently ... To inspector Robert L'Heureux at the Sureté, in Paris.

-D'accordo!

Giulio Dall'Abaco adjusted his white silk scarf, and clung to his arm.

-Adesso ... andiamo .. Yes?

(Three hours later…)

...

The old book,open in the famous sonnet number five was still on the bed had insisted on hearing David's voice , waving in the climax, while reciting the prohibited verses from the Renaissance heritage.

David sat on the bed, pushing aside the green silk cushions on which he leaned his naked body, and lit a cigarette, inhaling ,snuffing the Turkish smoke with a delight almost erotic.

He reached out and took the notebook from the pocket of his coat.

Giulio had fallen asleep, exhausted by the violence of their almost brutal intercourse.

David reread, in silence,a letter that had turned yellow with timebut, still smelling of stale snuff, violets ...

He squinted.

In only wenty-four hours he would know, finally, the truth.

Those distant black almond eyes,sad,unfathomable, poked his clung to them.

He stood in silence, dressed, and left that luxurious apartment in Campo dei Fiori.

Finally, with those same eyes almond-shaped black sadly clutching his heart, allowed himself to be swallowed by the darkness that was preceding the dawn. ... ...

(TO BE CONTINUED)


	2. THE TOWER OF SILENCE:CHAPTER TWO

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TOWER OF SILENCE

Chapter II:

Allegro ma non troppo

(Ville d'Autrémont, Combourg, the next morning)

Gradually, Spencer Reid turned from the dark hole. The environmental smell was pungent, perhaps stale, and he found himself with his face buried in the pillow, the bed intact, his body shivering ,but still sweating ...

He sat on the bed, and tried to rearrange the shreds of his looked by the window.

There was sun.

An ancient clock indicated that had just struck nine AM..

Five discreet taps on the door made him stand, as if he were moved by an invisible spring.

-Monsieur le jeune docteur? S'il vous plait?

It was the voice Mrs. Dutertre's voice.

-Allez, Madame, s'il vous plait! En avant!-he said, trying to sound credible in French.

The old woman came in with the breakfast tray. It contained his breakfast,exquisitely arranged in a service made with porcelain of Saxony.

Latte, in the French manner, croissants ( that he liked so much), toasted country bread, whipped butter, orange marmalade ... He looked at the food with relish.

He was hungry.

He smiled, and thanked the lady, who winked.

-A le etter to you, Monsieur le jeune docteur.

-Merci –he replied, gently taking the silk paper, that was smelling of gardenia.

.

It was a Gideon's note.,written in French.:

"Professor JM Gideon d'Autrémont invites Dr. Spencer William James Reid to participate in an excursion

to Combourg Castle Tower (Tour du Chat,) at eleven in the morning of the date, September 29, 2012 .. punctuality is appreciated. "

He smiled at the idea, which seemed funny, colourful, and very typical of Gideon, moreover: to behave as in the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, he had thought to hear a muted chords, but vigorous, coming from downstairs.

It was, without doubt, the piano, the same grand piano whose shadow he had seen on arrival.

But ... who was the performer?

He finished his coffee as fast as he could, changed clothes (jacket, breeches, boots and a hat), and downed to the hall.

He leaned silently to Gideon 's private parlour., which had a window overlooking the winter garden.

The pianist was none other than Gideon himself.

He recognised the notes of the Liszt's study in B flat minor, La Chasse Neige (Snow Storm,.) ,, masterfully played by whom had been so long his boss and mentor in a completely different universe.

It seemed incredible.

He was a professional profiler, a genius, an absolute monster with an eidetic memory, but he had never really gotten to know Jason Gideon ..

(TO BE CONTINUED)


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER III ::

He stopped ,and listened. The tempo was perhaps too slow compared to the usual interpretations of the famous piece, but he found it fascinating. Extremely passionate.

He stood at the door of Gideon's chamber , seeing him move on the was wearing a burgundy velvet robe de chamber , and his hair ,dark brown, almost black,now grayish and straight, slicked back strongly,was covering just the balding crown.

A cigarette was consuming in the ashtray that was on a coffee table. A little porcelain cup with a silver base (located next to the ashtray) was letting the coffee to become cold.

Reid cleared his throat, knowing full well that perhaps Gideon could not hear him.

There was a silence that followed the last chord.

There waere,however,no commentaries..He was already speechless.

.

Then Gideon turned and greeted him casually:

-Good morning, Reid. Have you slept well?

-Yes .. uh ... no ...

He knew he could not fool Gideon. Nobody was really capable of it,,,,Well, maybe he could fool himself,,,, if he allowed it, sometimes ...

-You were in Paris .. for how many days? –Gideon asked, taking his cigarette, a Gauloise whose pungent scent hurt the sensitive nose of Spencer, causing a mixture of pleasure and displeasure.

-For some hours, nothing more..I only had have time to visit a bit of Notre Dame, something of the Louvre (very little, almost nothing).,and the Musée de l'Homme was closed, and ...

and ...

-….and you took advantage to give a turn for the medical school, dating a student whose name was Duperré for half an hour later on the Countrescarpa St., for to provide you with a serving of artificial oblivion ... right?

Reid smiled, despite being discovered.

("How the hell could he know? ...")

-Do not worry,Reid.I know very well that you have not forgotten who you is now before you, Reid ..

-No, of course not, Professor.

Gideon pointed to a chair beside him, and gently stirred a silver bell.

-More coffee?-he asked

-Yes, thank you, please.

Madame Dutertre brought the coffee.

Gideon leaned slightly toward Reid, in an attitude of confidence.

-Now I'll unveil the greatest mystery, my friend. I'll tell you why I made you come here. For this, I must go back to the letter (which I think you still retain) I left abandoned for you with my Glock , my badge and some other things in that cabin lost in the forests of Virginia. You remember I told you that you were the only one whom was capable of to understand. You were my workmanship, but you already wore the mark of genius when I met you.

You breathed the air from my lungs, which seemed an extension of my veins ... I had a son would never recognize me, a son whose sonship si still uncertain for me..I had always powerful reasons for to think this way! ... And ,since then, I never trusted the bonds of my own flesh and blood.I provided to children who Imyself plucked off death ... and ,so,I had my flesh perpetuated in whom I have chosen, maybe free, maybe not ... to continue my work.

This was Gideon, undoubtedly, megalomaniacal, self-centered, dramatic, theatrical ...

-Indeed:I did not walked away because of that that crazy murderer did to the woman whom I had sent chrysanthemums .. It is the case that I hate chrysanthemums, and that woman was not worth more to me than a handful of ashes.I tended to see the others (except children) as handfuls of ash, reducing to their latest ultimate this was not so with you- he stood I see you like I see myself, or as I would have liked to see myself ...

Reid ,unwillingly, started shaking.

-'I'm dying, Gideon said, fixing her black eyes on the almond ones of his young friend- I have irreversible liver cirrhosis, a result of my own method to remove the pain... It's a matter of months ... And, as my son does not even want to hear the initial of my name (he not my son, on the other hand, and I have the irrefutable evidence !'), and I've already resolved the situation of my nephews, the two sons of my poor sister, I decided to appoint you my heir. This house, two small properties I own in Virginia and Philadelphia, my apartment in New-York, and another one I had bought in Buenos Aires.: everything will be js neither great nor small .. . and I trust that you will make good use of it.

-Sir,, I ...

Reid was stunned, could not leave the feeling of annihilation Gideon's words had brought to his soul...

-No matter. Nothing matters ,except you ... You and what you never dared to say.

He rose from his chair, t and ook off his could appreciate the wounds on his chest, the traces that a thousand battles were showing through to the open shirt ... Reid looked away, in a gesture of decorousness..

Gideon approached to a V iennese rack,and chose a jacket similar to the one Reid was wearing ,a scarf ,and a peaked cap.

-Now let's go-he said -To the cat tower.

….

(Rome, Hotel Excelsior, at the same time)

The phone was past noon.

Rossi shifted in the enormous king size bed of his hotel room .

It was Giulio.

-What I've asked is ready, caro mio.Ë fatto! Should I fax it to you just now?

everything in a dark envelope, and send it to me by a messenger.

-You do not want to see what it says?-Giulio was surprised.

it to me as I have asked you –David said, dryly.

And he cut the conversation.

He lit a cigarette, and headed for the bathroom to take a hot shower.

Maybe ,finally, the water would wash the smell of that endless last night ...

All the past remembrances ,so fateful, peered into his memory, when he saw his face tired, haggard, pale, in the bathroom mirror.

Once,he had been…..

Now, it was just an old man.

.

He hid his face in his hands.

Silently, stealthily, his defensive mechanism became operational, and ,with the flow of some tepid water, David Rossi returned from the vacuum.

He was already hoping.

….

(Chateau de Combourg, Tour du Chat, at the same time).

-The tower has a cubicle on the top-Reid and Gideon walked up the stone stairs, feeling their breath cut -And it was in the cubicle that the poet had his child dialogues with the ghost of a you like cats, Reid ?

-Considering the fact that they are capable of transmitting more than a hundred illnesses to other species, including humans, and that the possibility of contracting such diseases is more or less, 40 out of 100 in the case of domestic cats , and about 70 out of 100, in the wild or feral, urban or rural ... well ... yes,I like cats-. Spencer replied, with his habitual way..

Gideon smiled.

When the rise, that was seemingly endless, concluded, they entered into a small cubicle, where they could still see stains and streaks of moisture in the walls.

On one side, there was a tiny ,infantile bed, ,that had belonged to the poet.

Through the window it was coming a diffuse light, that was so yellowish and sad.

-Let's see,- Gideon said -Reid, noting the stains on the you have the stain with the cat figure..Now,please,make the possible profile for this poet.

Reid cleared his throat, observed the singular spot, that sharp, stood out greenish veins of widespread moisture, and began:

-His childhood was apparently golden but very used to spend his hours in solitude, accompanied only by his personal ghosts:the ones that he had created as a defense against the abuse, that was being repeated by his strictely severe father,again and mother ,on the contrary,was too permissive, sensitive, and lived (and taught him how to live)in a universe made ad hoc, with shreds of reality amid a fantastic hazeRené grew under the sudden shreds of reality, for him, were like knives.

Gideon laughed, fixing his eyes on Spencer:

-But tell me ... who are you shaping up, boy? François René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand .. or yourself?

Reid lowered his terrible black eyes,always inquisitors, toured his slender, delicate, almost angelic figure ...

-Are there still any angels in your life, Spencer? – Gideon

asked.

-Raphael-Reid said ,quickly, with an almost stammering tone .

He trembled.

Gideon approached the young man, and gently stroked her chin.

-Enough –he said-Let's go back.

The decline was relatively easy, as always the declines use to be..

In the middle of the road, however, Reid turned because he thought he heard a groan.

Gideon's face was twisting in pain.

-Master .. are you okay?

-Yes, yes, it's nothing ... do not ... worry ...

A red thread of hanging vomit, however, was escaping from the corner of his drew his handkerchief, and hastened to wipe it away.

Gideon stoically endured the terrible pain that destroyed his stomach, his liver ,his guts. The cirrhosis was all very was sadly true:

nothing could be done already.

Gideon leaned his head on Spencer's shoulder.

However,he didn't call for help, nor issued a single complaint.

In the middle of that narrow stone staircase, both men were closely endured the embrace, still shaking.

The breathing became painful, full of anxiety ... There was a moment of mutual hesitation, almost like a vacuum, and then ... then ...

Both men's breaths mingled into one.

…

ANDANTINO_:

(THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD)

(Aaron Hotchner's apartments, in his old familiar house .,in Seattle, WA)

The first cold of the night had forced him to close the balcony He looked at his child ,whom was asleep, and took the lamp away from his ,he went back to his own bedroom.

He had not tourned on the heat device was even cooler there.

The phone was silent.

It was a convention that all of them had voluntarily adopted during those two weeks of vacation,.It was a necessity to relieve the accumulated stress,so heavy,so terrible. ...

But he couldn't sleep ;he could painfully take a bit of food,having lost the capability of to share his son's games or the simple joys of the family life.

He was feeling himself as an outsider, as an ember from hell, like that feared "Dibbuk" with which the Zeide (grandfather) Yitzhak threatened him when playing pranks in his childhood .It was like if that Dibbuk would have finally seized him.

It was silly, but he was feeling like a stray.

("And if there were only ten righteous?" ...)

("Sodomite!")

He saw the grandfather Yitzhak,the Synagogue's oberkantor in Seattle, pointing his long bony index.

He saw himself as a boy, secretly touching, enjoying the secrecy and silence, but cursing,at the same time, that dirty yellowish juice that was staining his innocence ...

The sound of water filling the tub promised him a warm bath.

Aaron went to the desk, opened one of the drawers, and pulled out the envelope with the photographs.

His memory flew to the gloomy cemetery in which he found Hanckel already deceased;, his memory got into the most appalling nightmare ..

He went finally into the bathroom, and, quietly, slowly, undressed.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV:

(Aaron Hotchner's private chamber, in his family home ,in Seattle)

The whole mirror returned his body image: tight flesh, lean, sinewy but powerful, and the ominous sign of that stab given by the monster in his side,.But,besides it,the invisible marks of one thousand kisses given by his lover, as ragweed spots mixed with poison ,spreading throughout his skin, shamelessly, openly ..

("Spencer ... small mongrel offspring of heaven and hell ...")

("Spencer ... my life ... my death ...")

The swarthy skin bristled .His muscles tensed in an ineffable spasm,suffering and delicious.

His right hand held the photograph taken on a bright day ("Who would have taken it ? Garcia? .. No doubt!"). Face clean, gently surrounded by the long hair with that matte clear almond colour (colour of bitter almonds!), the almost golden eyes, giving his back to a summer sun that was hurtful and obscene; the body ,so slender as a willow branch, the fine , gentle figure, scorched by the summer light, the purple tiny swimsuit, and the bare feet, those feet perhaps too long, that he had amassed a thousand times with his caresses and kisses .. The smile, not explicit, but implied, riping those peach lips ...

A trickle of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth. The sinister hand ,the hand of the tempter, went down her thighs, looking for the brand of his race, crowning the fruit, erect, hard, red with desire.

("Mild und leise ...") (Smooth and quiet)

He remembered the time when an unexpectedly complex case dragged them to the Metropolitan Opera, during a performance of Tristan and Isolde ...

("Mild und Leise ...")

Love that dies and kills.

The notes of that passage almost orgasmic from Liebestod echoed in his head, while his right hand clutched like a claw, cleaving nails on paper, grasping the photography.

His left hand, soaked in his own pain made frustrated desire, moved let himself slide into the warm water,that almost struck her flesh ...

His hand went crazy.

("Mild und Leise ...")

His throat exploded,but he suffocated his own cry of ecstasy, biting her lip until it bled.

("You, Aaron, onanist, Jewish dog!")

Then ….silence, emptiness .. And again the fog ...

….

(Study in Ville d' Autrémont, Combourg)

The honey-colored silky hair rested on the mature bare chest, that chest covered by old scars.

-Memories of Afghanistan, -Jason said, stroking the ivory shoulder, cuddling it against his flesh-As this blanket that covers us now. (Both lay on the chaise longue, naked, covered by a beautiful afghan nap ,very soft lavender, with whimsical figures in antique copper).

Gideon better accommodated the blanket, wrapping jealously Spencer's body.

-This .. and an Afghan boy named Haman Hamid, who occasionally relieved my sorrows with her expert mouth, that's all I have left of my Central Asian adventure, apart from the scars.

Spencer looked at the vast library that served as background to the study wall of Gideon's chamber..

In five minutes he read and cataloged the titles of (more or less) two hundred volumes in five languages.

-You have an interesting collection here , many volumes altogether? 1650?

-Exactly,sovereign beauty ,exactly!-Gideon squinted, happy,sighing, kissing Spencer's satin shoulder .

He had not meant to penetrate had rubbed against each other until the satiety, qualifying their friction with their mouths: Spencer, almost like a child, drinking eagerly,.Gideon, like a sick insane , idiotized by the drug that he felt concentrated ,blood throbbing, in the buttocks of Spencer Reid.

-I met this library throughout my life, and I have more copies in my will see almost no criminological texts, except that the ones I've written in the past.

Spencer was entertained, remembering word for word the second volume of the General History of Gibbon.

-In Gibbon, their footer notes are the most interesting part-, he said, -as when he cites the passage in which Suetonius describes Tiberius minnows, barely pubescent boys swimming underwater in the imperial pool ... ...

Gideon laughed, kissing his forehead-

-You are the flesh perfection ... -he whispered in his ear, gently licking the shell of his delicate,pale ear .And he added, in an almost menacing tone:

-And you're mine ...

Spencer sat up suddenly.

Gideon smiled, a perverse expression in his eyes.

-O ... you're from another? Do you belong to another?

Gideon paused, and sighed deeply.

-Don't worry.. I always knew began during that terrible case in Anchorage, right? The Butcher's Homicides ?Alaska?

Spencer nodded.

-Lars André Tourneur, the Scrap from Juneau.,who slaughtered his victims with the edge of a piece of ice, and then quartered them, as in a butchery .I remember it as if were now..That was a good ,the one you did with the rest of the team. ...

-There were no clues,-said Reid-The subject was amazingly clever ...

-Oh, the Anchorage hotel was so crowded with tourists at that time of the year, that you should have to share your room with your illustrious ,, plus boss immediately became your lover.

-Almost without realizing it,- Reid said, lighting a cigarette, -as if it was the attitude of a couple of habitual poachers, one fell into the arms of the other..You already know: he k is not an easy person- Gideon nodded, nodding, while Spencer went and continued:-You had stayed in Quantico, held by a fairly significant mess, something related to internal affairs..Morgan was still bedridden, recovering from his were only the girls, he and I .

Tourneur left notes on the walls of the city, announcing that he would attack a certain time, in a determined day .But those tracks were almost always fake..We were racking our brains ... I prepared the map details, and concentrated on the triangulation received in a call from a disposable cell ... Asnd . .. Nothing! ... Finally, we find Tourneur :he was about to escape from Anchorage by the road to Juneau, the city where he had been road was frozen..The car skidded ... and Tourneur died on the spot, saving us not only the task of ending we with him, but the tedious ceremony of the arrest, which, if any, was in that case certainly ridiculous.

Tired, frozen, numb, we returned to the girls stayed to play bingo in the great hall of the ground floor .. We went up to take a hot shower, and take off with the impossible was a hard storm. The blizzard blew like agitated by the devil.I took a piece of paper and a role and did some calculations for to know just the time when twe'd get out of there: I saw no other solution than to arm ourselves with patience ... They would be three or four long days.

He took from his wallet a photograph of the blonde, and looked at it with sadness.I wanted to repay the gesture that he had been after me during the Hanckel's affair, and above all, I wanted to create some confidence to slip away and give to my screaming veins what they were desperately asking for.. But I didn't knew (or ,better,I did not want to admit) that my veins were not crying this time by a needle ...

I put my hand on his shoulder,and looked straight into his eyes. Then ,I realized that they were the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen in my life, and that his mouth,so sharp, so bitter, attracted me as strong spirits use to do . Strong spirits…and poisons…

He had removed his jacket and was in sleeves,undoing his tie..The heating device was very began to take off his shirt., unbuttoning it so slowly,so slowly… My eyes followed his hand ...

I do not know exactly at what time we shook in an embrace ,but it was immeasurable.

I asked him for to be sodomized. I said if it was not him, it would not be anybody else."

Spencer paused, seeing that Gideon's face reddened with anger.

-No other? ... Don't you have been, perhaps, with Ethan? Did you have an intercourse with him when you disappeared for an entire afternoon, and its c onsequent evening,while we were in New Orleans? You,yourself,presented him to me..I told you that he was a good pianist.I was perhaps also meant him to be good as sodomite. I assumed you both were already know:you can not fool me.

-No-Reid cut, dryly -He wanted to force me, he wanted me to undress to observe crime marks on my skin ... But I finally had to leave .And I resisted before to his insistence.

-And, tell me ... Rossi ... did he do any insinuating proposal to you? –Gideon asked,suddenly,.

Reid shrugged, astonished

-No. Why should he?

Reid was more than stunned.

-Did you know him? –he asked.

Gideon smiled slyly as in a mocking way,:so gloomy,that Reid was afraid to insist with his questions..

-And who do you think that suggested "friendly" to him for to return to the old ways? The old fox David was is more or less four years older than I assure you:he has so much experience ,that could also lecturing about how to sodomize supreme beauties like you ... Rossi is as wicked as myself: but he perhaps knows better how to hide this detail,.There were over thirty years that I know him.

-Really?

-Yes.

-And where you met him for the first, may I ask? The FBI, in college, in the army ...?

-In the Nevada is a long history, which is beside the point.

Reid knew perfectly well that the story itself was irrelevant, and wondered what on earth could be doing Rossi and Gideon in the Nevada desert (near where he, Reid, was born) thirty years ago ... He only dared to ask:

-Were you …lovers?

Gideon's laugh should resonate in Quantico, since it was so loud.

-Lovers? -He said, choking with his own laughter-Lovers? The "eat-spaghetti" and I?

Now …that's good!

Reid didn't laugh,however..He ended his cigarette, and lay back on the chaise longue, letting the afghan blanket slip under his nipples, which appeared as two small buttons in bloom.

Gideon stopped laughing, and put his mouth to Spencer's nipples.

-'I've been in Cairo, but I must tell you that all the roses of the Fayum, the most beautiful in the world, when opened in the morning with the dew, can not compete with your nipples.

Spencer was left him flatter and worship, while thinking of the half-sentences, in the words of Gideon had not said…because he did not dare to say.

Gideon turned him in a very smooth motion, and found Spencer's buttocks, caressing them feverishly.

-Let me have you-he whispered,-and tell me ,after,if I could make you moan as much as your circumcised does..

…


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER V:

(Allegro agitato)

(Rome, Excelsior Hotel lobby, afternoon)

David Rossi walked with long strides through the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel, while waiting for a call from Paris.

A quarter to five pm, Rome time, he was finally in communication with L'Heureux, who confirmed that he had received the reports correctly.

-'Well, now ...-Rossi himself sounded extremely nervous, and this bothered him: it was not his style-Now, s'il vous plait, my dear Robert, sent,please, the two faxes simultaneously, to each number I have indicated :one to Seattle, WA, and the other to Raleigh, should arrive at the same time.

-D'accord, mon ami! .. But ... I hear you like unusually altered ... If it's something urgent .. why you do not trust us?

-I do not trust anyone-Rossi sounded dry,more dry than habitually.

L'Heureux jumped across the line.

("What the hell was all that?")

He came to believe that Rossi was really mad, and that it was not just talk.

At last he said:

-I've already sent communication to the mayor of Ile-de-Vilaine, and I am to speak (if you want, we can go into conference) with the chief of police in Saint Malo.

-That will not be necessary.

L'Heureux stayed astonished . What a pride of these Americans! Even if they had Italian blood!

-Dave, we've been looking for this guy for three years. "That" began more or less four ... no .. almost five and a half years ago, to be more exact, with some could verify whether these warning news were true, if they were true, or if it was ...

-I know.

L'Heureux exploded:

_Merde, alors, David! And why did not you tell us before?

-Quiet, Robert ... quiet ... Let us make this.-he checked his pocket watch .-In two hours I'll be in París. I convened with the two agents yet,they should arrive during the day of tomorrow ... maybe tomorrow night, more or less..I have booked the flight for them from New York.

-As you , albeit at a safe distance, I warn you that I will be there.

….

(Across the world, in the Appalches. Near Raleigh, NC .. Noon)

The boy climbed the small hill sweating, riding his bicycle like the last thing he should do in his life.

-Hey .. what about, Spike?'Are you training for the race from coast to coast?-Morgan screamed.

The boy gestured,giving him a document..

-Is this for me?

Spike, a dark-haired boy (even darker than Morgan) about fifteen or sixteen, messenger of the post office in the nearby village, had in his hands a paper.

-Yes, 's a fax.

-A .. fax?-Morgan scratched his bald gleaming head , and took the letter, giving it a quick glance .

His face changed suddenly.

Then,he took off fifty dollars,and gave them to the boy:

'-Take here.,Go to the movies with your girlfriend, boy.I shall go to work now.. See you at my return.

Fast as lightning ,he entered the hut.

Garcia was busy buttering the toasts.

_-I must go away urgently, baby Kevin in my name,please.

-Derek! ... What .. what happens?

Penelope's intuition was proverbial.

-You will .. right? ... You're going to Quantico ... without me .. without us?

-No, I'm not going to Quantico, precisely-He fulfilled his bag with some clothes, turned on his cell phone and checked his Glock regulatory ..

The girl paled.

-Where are you going?

-I can not tell you. –he gently stroked her cheek- Do not worry, I'll be fine ... But do not call me .. ok?

-As you wish.

Already in the doorway, Derek Morgan turned his face for an instant:

-I love you, my princess.

Penelope was almost crying.

- I love you too, my Moorish King ...

…

(Seattle, WA.11 am)

Aaron Hotchner read and reread the paper.A shiver ran across his members, and the specter of guilt again showed his yellow teeth when his eyes narrowed.

-This arrived this morning, very early..I thought you were sleeping,and , I did not want to bother ..

Aaron clenched his hands, and almost shouted:

-I was not sleeping, mother! You know I never sleep!

The poor woman looked at him hopelessly, and left the room without a word.

Hotchner turned on his cell phone and dialed an international number.

-Albergo Excelsior, buona evening…

-Miss, please ... Signorina, prego ... With Room 324.

-Subito, signore

-Grazie.

...

(Four hours later, at the international airport John f. Kennedy, )

The two men looked at each other silently.

The tall dark one was meant to say something, but the other stopped him:

-Do not say a word, .

Morgan did not take much to realize that Hotchner had drunk, and was sickening with the smell of bourbon.

-No .. I only wanted to limit that, if it is so serious, so serious, so dangerous ...that mysteriously can not even be mentioned ... then ... why us? Why did not address themselves, the Sureté, or the Interpol?

-I do not know-Aaron shook his head –What I know is that Rossi specified we should say not a word of this to anyone, not even to the girls, or to Dr. Strauss.

-It is something..unofficial,then ...-Morgan scratched his head -Hey ... where is Spencer? He must not know about this?

Aaron shrugged, terrified by the question, but even more by the fact that he had not seen Reid, who he expected to find also in the he could not inquire too.

-Why do you ask me, Derek? ... I have not the slightest idea.-he paused-I thought he was with you.

-With me? No. I have not seen him since the day we parted to take these was going to visit his mother, and then to Europe ...

He seemed to remember something:

- Hey, boss! Reid is in France! Now I remember that he went to an investigation that would take place in the Museum of Anthropology, and to give some lectures at the Sorbonne!

("He did not say anything ... He never said he would travel to Europe!")

The speaker announced the imminent departure for Paris.

….

(Charles De Gaulle International Airport, í night )

The man with Mephistophelean goatee and rapacious eagle eyes was wearing a long gray raincoat.

It was raining. He was smoking compulsively, but still seemed cold and indifferent as ever.

The three officers shook their hands: the one, tall, dark, was wearing his leather jacket, jeans and other, pale, almost disfigured, was dressed impeccably: jacket, tie, white shirt, briefcase,and a black raincoat on his shoulders. Everything in him was suggesting some executive chief,arriving to Paris for a business meeting.

-For here,gentlemen-Rossi said- Kindly follow me, please.

Without further additional words, he led them to the car, a dark blue Alfa Romeo , with black crystals.

-Your weapons,please- he asked.

-The weapons?- Derek asked-We meant to go unarmed? Go!

-Not at all..But we must not use our regular weapons .

Once inside the car, he took a suitcase of considerable dimensions, and opened it.

-Pick, -he said.

Rossi had a splendid collection of firearms of all kinds, many of them historical.

Morgan chose a Magnum and a Luger , after making a gesture of disgust at the German gun (which still bore the emblem of the SS), chose a 9mm Beretta, and a Smith and Wesson .22.

-Excellent choice- Rossi said.

'-Well, but ... what and why we came? Because I guess it will not be to commit some kind of assault ... Or all this is a joke? –Morgan inquired.

From the wheel, Rossi said:

-I wish it were, Derek.-he sighed- I wish it were.

While he was driving ,he spoke very slowly, as coolly as a mathematics teacher whom would explain to his students a theorem:

-Also we shed our plates and cards that accuse us as members of the will carry only our "civilians" identification cards, so to speak: passports and driver's licenses.

Morgan broke, pounding in his seat:

-By thunder, Rossi! Tell us once and for why we come here, goddamnit?

-Patience, Derek, and I advise you about to keep your adrenaline for later.

Aaron Hotchner, meanwhile, unfazed, looked at the emptiness, while the brightness of the lights in the rain passed as a fugitive bolts before his eyes, burst but insensitive.

("He's not here .. He is not here!")

Soon they came to the building of a rather old hotel, located in the nearby of the Quai d'Orsay ..

They entered, and Rossi asked to the waiter for coffee ,cognac and cigarettes.

They went up to the room, and sat around a small table, which only had a lamp.

-Friends-Rossi continued, unperturbed, using the same tone, extracting a folder from his briefcase-This is the case.I beg you, please,to do not be interrupted until the end of my explanation.

He lit a Turkish cigarette, and began, without seeming in the tone of his voice the slightest hint of emotion:

-It's been almost five years that have been taking place in Europe, and also in South America, a series of unexplained murders to the naked eye, and unusual for the crudeness of the modus operandi (or should I say the modi operandi?) the murderer in question is employing-.

He opened one of the folders:

-January 2006, Rome: Salvatore Gianninetti, opera member of the choir at the Santa Cecilia Academy, countertenor: he died after being repeatedly raped; his body was found floating in the was suffocated with a plastic bag that contained lavender essence..Literally,he was cdrowned in perfume.

Morgan glanced at the photo.

It was a tall, thin boy,with chestnut hair and brown eyes, and an androgynous look ..

-February 2006: Rivas de la Llosa, alias "The Wicker" a young bullfighter,a matador: stabbed , not precisely with knives, but with hollowed bull horns, the kind that are used for drinking wine :. Of course, the horns were found stuck in the body contained fine wine of Syracuse, which is a blood red, and taste rather sweet.. Mass wine , to be more explicit.

The photograph showed the graceful body wrapped in yellow silk: the hair was brown, and the amberlike eyes were an open vacuum to nothing ...

-February 2007, Athens: Demetrios Lambrinos, dancer at the ballet company in the PireoTheatre .He was found in the same port :his feet were flayed, burned with acid, and half-eaten by a pack of dogs swarming the wharf.

Hotchner stood, with a bound.

His eyes were fixed on the figure of Demetrios Lambrinos, or what was left of him.

His heart was almost stopping..He was… ... he was ...

-This guy was identical ... Spencer? -Morgan asked ,reluctantly.

-I said I did not want to be interrupted, Derek -Rossi said in a tone that brooked no argument whatsoever.

After drinking a long sip of coffee, he continued:

-August 2008, Buenos Aires: Carlos Raúl García Caballero, actor, specialized in to perform works of Wilde and was impaled in a Turks' style, after a successful performance of the play "Salome", which, transvestite, personified the was found in an alley near a location where Jorge Luis Borges, the famous writer, placed, in his short story The Death and the Compass, the abandoned mansion of Triste le Roy.

The facies of the victim was repeated: long brown hair; a thin, tall, slender body;

amber , gold or honey eyes ...

Rossi continued,almost mercilessly:

-December 2008, Prague: Karel Luschka, young and talented chess player, great master, drowned with the king of his own chessboard:the white had gouged out his eyes, and his hands chopped off.

February 2009, Paris: Daniel Laforgue, concert pianist, former child prodigy ,darling of Parisian society, died after a concert at the Salle Pleyel, hanged with a rope snared with a cord, more precisely the one for the last A of the instrument, after being raped repeatedly until his ears ... Mainly by the ears ...

I give you the fact that all these victims, in addition to striking physical resemblance between them, had in their history records of to have qualified with an IQ of over one hundred eighty ...

Rossi did not want to be interrupted, but the shake of the table, a tremor like it could have felt during an earthquake, left him speechless.

It was

Aaron..

Although unrecognizable.

The wide-eyed, sweating, disjointed factions, shaking like a madman, the typical facies of paranoid attack ...

-That son of a bitch, bastard ... this ... damn ...he wants Spencer Reid! And not only what he wants, but he probably has him right now!

Rossi nodded wordlessly.

Morgan got to his feet.

-Besides,-' continued Aaron , going up Rossi, and taking him by the lapels of his jacket- motherfucker ... because that's what you are, Rossi! ... You're also gloating with details of something that you knew, before us ... and you are doing this to me!

-Quiet, Aaron! –Derek said,.grasping him.

-This guy does not imitate the classic serials (the zodiac, the Ripper or the son of Sam) butthose ones whom we ourselves have done a criminal profiling! We, Rossi! This murderer knows us well, he knows Spencer! ! The murderer knows details of crimes that we have investigated, details that were never revealed to the press!

-Aaron! What do you mean?- Derek asked, terrified, reaching for the Luger 45.

Rossi broke:

-I did not know it until recently!'This is what hat I've tried to tell you since I left Quantico! Course he wants Reid, it is clear that he currently held him , clear that these poor boys were only replacements! I have tried that, gentlemen ,... YOU COULD INFERE ! ... that this case is capable of to drag the BAU away….to the dunghill! So much mystery, so we had to keep the secret!

Derek calmed down somewhat, while Aaron, standing, trying to compose , he asked, without abandoning, however, the tone of urgency:

-Any idea who might be the subject? This is someone who has escaped us, which we could not identify ... discover ...?

An imitator come from the United States? A copycat?

Rossi stared, tight, and focused his eyes prey in the bottom of perpetual mourning that lasted inside those eyes, that seemed not to see what was patently obvious.

Morgan was silent, seized with a dull horror, that so intimately, was slyly devouring his soul.

("No. .. this can not be real .. He took me out of the monotony of a race without ameaning destiny .He gave such a north to my life .. No. ... No.. no!"Please,Lord,not him ¡!")

-The ttacks continued only in winter-Rossi pursuived, while Aaron slumped in his seat-He is the copycat of the imitators..He has only one preferred victimology .He knows all the details..He NEVER was profiled..NEVER!.

Morgan spoke, his voice was a thread:

- For .. why? .. Why was he never profiled?

Rossi pulled away a little of the lamplight.

-Because when we (he and I)established the regulations,it was absolutely banned..

Hotchner stood, jumped, and ran for the door.

Morgan, meanwhile, looked ... he felt himself to be paralyzed.

-Can you understand now, gentlemen, why I sent for you?

Morgan looked up.

-David… –he said ... -Is this safe? Because here we talk about crimes committed in different countries, a journey that has even carried murder to South America ...

For answer, Rossi placed on the table the Dall'Abaco dossier.

-He travels with his real passport, he does not use aliases ... he wants to drag us up.

And he has Spencer in his possession.

-But it may be too late!- Derek said-Spencer might be dead.!

-Error-stopped-Rossi-I do not think he wants to kill him.I believe that he wants to use him to destroy all what we created together thirty years ago : the BAU, which blames all his feelings of guilt. of bitterness, of failure, of detachment from life, in short, all his madness.

I do not do this, gentlemen, for mere affection, or for some kind of personal satisfaction: the BAU is the main interest for me. I do not want to see it roling on the ground, even if it means shooting several heads..I'm interested in preserving the institution and its principles: people are expendable . we are going further and Reid is dead, we should have some thought for to find the possible replacement, and ...

Hotchner ,again, took him by the lapels, and little was to slap him.

-Son of a bitch! -he cried –let's go now, you bastard ...!

Rossi smiled.

-Aaron, I cannot recognise I should say that this was the hidden side of you?

Hotchner released him with a violent shove, with such bad luck that he,himself, fell down miserably.

-Bourbon Syndrome. Chronic-Rossi said, laughing.

Morgan helped his boss to his feet, and to take off his jacket to wear the security vest.

-Can you do it, boss?

Hotchner nodded.

-Go sticking fevers seem to be very strong ,lately, -said Rossi, while wearing himself the vest.

Morgan did not understand what fevers could tweet hinting Rossi, but his heart nearly stopped when David announced:

-It is almost certain that Reid was not kidnapped for to be dragged to Combourg .He replied at the invitation willingly, because, I repeat, he has absolutely no suspicion almost certainly nothing.I c ould also add that J (I will not mention his entire name) and he have had some kind of intimacy ... agreed, of course.

These words were raw darts stuck to Naphtali Elijah Aaron Hotchner, to the present time the absolute chief of the elite unit.

Rossi quenched his umpteenth cigarette butt.

-I will drive-he said –Let's go..And a tip: always shoot prisoners will be taken on this issue.

(To be continued ..)


	6. Chapter 6

THE TOWER OF SILENCE

(English translation,by the Author)

Chapter VI:

(Rachmaninov, Second Concerto,first mouvement)

(Ville d'Autrémont, nine o'clock)

The winter garden had a sort of secret charm in the morning.

On the blanket of yellow silk, there was a solitary purple tie, and the vision of orchids carefully aligned in a semicircle, receiving the autumn sun.

Reid was busy in sorting them , reaching for his knowledge of them,he discovered , loner, a colchicum or mountain saffron, with its curiously humble flowers with a sad liliaceous blue colour..

The music came from the studio placed next door, whose gates opened into the garden.

The coffee was served on the table.

He put aside pencil and paper., And sat next to the yellow silk, gently caressing it with the tip of his fingers.

. All of the preceding day he had been in that chaise longue, in the arms of his strange guest.

Where would now Gideon be ? Sleeping? Would he have gone?

. Upon awakening, drunk with pleasure, happy, tired, with his nerves as numbed by the considerable effort that presuppose eight spasms lengthy and without interruption, he did not find his master -mentor-lover at his side.

Only the music indicated that ,perhaps, he was in the house.

... Or maybe not ...

He slowly sipped his coffee, sweetened with honey, and it was then, when the last drops of sweetness bathed his tongue, when he reminded of Aaron.

Aaron… What was he doing at that time?

He looked at his was nine in the morning in Britain.

. Midnight in Seattle ..

He lit a cigarette, leaned back in the wicker chair, and left himself abandoned to memories.

(Anchorage, Alaska, winter 2007)

-'I'm in a gelid land ,and I have only your eyes -the kiss took up residence on the eyelids of Aaron as a balm - Your eyes, a crystal in perpetual mourning ...

Aaron grabbed the waist ,so exquisitely formed, and then dropped his hand to caress his almost lifeless lover's narrow hips.

- And your eyes are like bitter almonds . –said Aaron , still breathing with longing

A kiss, and another, and another, and another ...

-How far back you want me? -asked Aaron.

-Since I watched those eyes of you for the first time .. and ... you?

Aaron somewhat parted from him and held his gaze,firmly.

-I do not want you.. I do love you.

Spencer raised his left leg, and wrapped Aaron's felt his muscles strong, wiry, like a sculpture .It was like bronze.,not cold marble, but it bore the stamp of what is cast in the flesh . It was hot as a force in all its beauty.

- 'You're beautiful, Jewish .-said Spencer , his voice muffled by desire.

-Young ,insolent gohim with topaz eyes-the swarthy man replied, narrowing further embrace.

He sought his mouth in his chest .It was a paroxism of fell down,bursting back on the bed, with intertwining Spencer in his body, without mercy, without reservation.

The "bold gohim", the "little daring"! fiddled with his mouth pinned to his throat, gently biting his ears, looking for the point of no return….Skilled,expert…sadistically charming… ")

Spencer remembered with eyes closed, clutching his cigarette and taking it to his mouth as if it was given to him ,already,to tast those kisses..

. One hand rested on his shoulder, and brought him back, when his body,that was still in enervation , was beginning to reenter into a state of erethism .

-My orchids go mad with jealousy when they look at your drowsy beauty .

Spencer opened his eyes and smiled.

-Jason ...- he said clutching the hand that caressed him -Where were you?

-Around, -Gideon said, sitting beside him -The old ones(like I am) need some time alone.

-You are not no old at old man doesn't drag his lover to orgasm more than seven times.

. Jason laughed, shrugging.

-Pure-old trickery ...-he ruffled his hair, and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, -I just want you to know I'm like King Marke: I 'm not here to separate the lovers, but to bring them together.

-Bringing them together?-Spencer shivered, despite do you mean by that?

-What you hear, creature-he sighed-. I told you I'm dying..This one is my latest adventure, the most beautiful, the most daring, the most perfect. I said that…, well, I heard about you and Aaron from the first time ... come on! Since before it happened! Or perchance you thought about the mess in internal affairs,and you believed that?

Spencer smiled..Perhaps in another circumstances he would have ,it was impossible, since this singular man, strange, unknown, unclassifiable, had become his lover.

-'There's something I want ask to you..Really,thy are two things: when that happens, I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered in the Grand Bé.-Spencer nodded gravely-The other is more difficult, -Gideon continued.- You know I suffer from liver cirrhosis,that is .Death from cirrhosis is quite unpleasant:bloating, vomiting nauseating substances, excremental liquids.. ... naked exposure of the human misery.

He went to another table that was in the garden, and opened a box t.

-I want to ask you for to do this for me.

That said, he showed him a singularly beautiful antique pistol.

-I .. I ... Reid stammered, `I do not know ... I can .. never ...

- ... You've never killed anyone in cold blood, right? But think, golden creature, that this will be only an act of immense mercy.I ask you to make me listen to the third movement of the concerto in C minor by Rachmaninov, while meet one of my two last wishes.

- I wish -he added, and his voice was almost broken-if it is not too much to ask, if you can close my eyes ,if they are still open, and you can do the same with my mouth ... if possible .. with a kiss ...

He sighed deeply.

-Do you like it ?- he wielded the pistol-It is a .38 special Eibar, Spanish, has ivory ornaments ...There are only two exactly equal..This is the original…Can you see? It has my initials:JMG

Spencer asked, examining it with curiosity:

- 'And the other?

Gideon smiled with an almost mocking expression.

- 'Soon you will know.

….

(On the road Paris-Saint Malo)

The images followed one after , trees, buildings, charming visions; however,everything had lost its relevance, its significance, its dimension of reality.

-This seems a nightmare-. Morgan said, leaning back in the back seat of the Alfa travel by the French roads to a command operation,like to a military mission,, with bulletproof vests, and no one stops us , nor does not even make a hint of wonder .. .

-Don't worry about-. Rossi said -Yes, it's a nightmare,or a surrealistic sketch, who is the most ruthless unsub that we have ever faced!..and…

-He has a name, not an unknown subject-third Aaron, already recovered from his unfortunate first appearance on stage-We know his name .. but, as he has deceived us yet , that probably is not the true one ...

hasn't deceived us in that .It is his real name.

Derek felt curious about something:

- Tell me, Rossi ... You knew him from long ago?

-I said that about thirty-five years, at least.

-Do you know something of his life …reliably? Because we never found anything.

Rossi laughed..In the meanwhile, the MP3 in the car let out the joyful notes of The Barber of admired again Rossi absolute coldness,his lack of empathy, his definitely iced nature,his petrified liked to be called" a disciplined sociopath". ..

Rossi began so:

-Gideon was born in a miserable hovel,. in Bronx. His father was a bastard that captured girls in Europe to bring them to America to pursue prostitution. The post-war hunger was the framework for their mischievous Gideon was the name of this ruffian .. One of these girls, Antoinette d'Autrémont, daughter of a good family from Britain, impoverished by the war, was left captivated by his promises ... and ... what more pleasure for a Jew ,than the degradation of a gohim?-Rossi looked significantly to Hotchner, over his shoulder, adjusting the rearview mirror in order,and continued:

- They had two children, while the poor woman contracted syphilis through his office, a disease that went straight to your former conspicuous general supervisor.

He did a pause;then,he continued:

- Abraham Gideon had lots of fun abusing of his own used to burn him with cigarettes when he returned from his travels ,sickening with kvas and cehapvodka .He used the boy for to make money ... you'll want to know that Jason Gideon was a very cute boy? This seems incredible, isn't so? -Rossi laughed harder-Until one day he escaped and went to jail after a shoplifting in a a result, he was confined in a kind of asylum or reformatory, while the sister was carried to a convent of nuns. In the asylum, among other things, Gideon showed what would be the final characteristics of his personality: an almost genetic bad character, a desperate need to defend who he considered the weakest, a belligerent atrocious temper ; his love for music, chess, books ... and, of course, his homosexuality ,that was conscious, confessed and expressed.

As ihe turned out to be a genius, he was awarded a scholarship, and gained access to school and the he had left the institution, he went to seek his sister, and, working in meanest trades (dishwasher, shoe shiner, errand boy, janitor, etc.) took over her until she married a this employee(his brother-in law) proved to be a paragon of debauchery, he took care of his two he also took her back to the city to take a walk around the hospital where Abraham Gideon was languishing because of cirrhosis (Antoinette had died some time ago,syphilis) and spat his face.

Jason was without a penny, in miserable condition, working night and day as a slave, giving all to the family of his sister Sophie, but he still retained the scholarship.

Both at school and at the university ,he was revealed as the genius that he he is!-Rossi said,stressed, raising a finger ... -That should not be forgotten,even if he is completely deranged .

- And you knew in college? -Derek asked, lighting a cigarette.

-Not precisely.I was in college in Philadelphia, the city where my family and I moved after to have left New those days,there was a sort of political meeting in the Nevada desert,and I travelled there,without any hesitation.: they were years of exuberant student union ...

Rossicontinued,with a nostalgic shade crossing upon his features:

-I was drinking a beer in one of the many bars located along the route between Reno and Las Vegas, when a guy came up to me .He was tall, with long curled hair, dark brown, dressed carelessly, and even boasting of his looked at me with a strange ,he said: :

-Let's go to f…ck the ass of the bourgeoisie.

I looked at him, holding the brightness of his dark eyes, perverse, provocative, smelling the grass from his cigarette like a mast raised ,so insolent, so petulant,…and I could not help but smile, and accept his tempting invitation.

We left, after acquiring a few beer cans ,certainly very economic,that I had to pay out of pocket, and that's when he introduced me to his ad latere, a very tall, blond, thin and infamous face which he called "Frank Van Houten ".

Hotchner violently interrupted him:

-FrankVan Houten?

- -This is not the one that? The one he just…he just….?- Derek stammered.

-The same,' said Rossi,always imperturbable—The same one of that confrontation in the cafeteria of the Desert

which does not surprise me at all to be the same one where we met, thirty-five years ago.

(To be continued ..)


	7. Chapter 7

… CHAPTER VII:

Rossi continued, while Aaron threw hand from his flask of bourbon:

-That night I was invited to spend the night in their trailer. I witnessed everything imaginable and unimaginable, too.I was attempting to sleep in a bunk located above the occupied by Jason, and I could heard the groans, roars, laments, that his fellow, fellow, Frank Van Houten, (whose back could see if I poked a little) tore from him..

I decided to abandon him (I couldn't bear that "scenario"!),even if I was sure Jason never would forgive me for that.

Said and done: he never forgave me not having added to his private orgy of three, and I think that attitude decided him to hate me for the rest of his life.

A few days later, however, he came to the bog where I was staying, and, near tears, told me the story of his hugged me, discovering his chest for to make me see his showed me marks of bites, gashes, burns ... in his back and buttocks .. Then…He kissed me passionately, and he said he would do anything for me, that I could consider him as only mine .. He reached into my groin, stroking, rubbing vehemently.I never had been the subject of a sexual attack of this nature before( I confess), and I was stunned, motionless, paralyzed, not knowing what to say or begged me to take him with me; he told me that he wanted us to do great things together..He gave me this gun,an Eibar 38 special, identical to the one he wore, and he had had engraved with my initials: RAP (my middle name is Anthony: Anthony, as he named after the son that his wife had, God knows with who).

Many years later, when you, Aaron,called me,phoned me, as a a result of developments in the case of Yates, passing upon cavalierly over his authority, he came to my house (how the hell he had learned where I lived, damned if I know!), angry, insulting me point blank, shouting from the rooftops that you and the rest of the team had chosen to contact me when I was sleeping with a bitch (it'ss true), and not with him, while he was working hardly on the case ,stealing hours to his sleeping..And he left my house yelling,impetuously::

-You're wasting your time with cheap bitches, while Yates is stabbing and killing half the world! You're pitiful, pathetic, and, as if that were not enough, you have a bad taste that can be qualified as atrocious!

I must place on record the following: what Gideon has never forgiven in your life is a slip of a heterosexual nature.

-That's ,himself, was married! And he says he has a child, '-said Morgan.

Rossi almost choked on his own laughter:

-Derek, innocent boy! We have wives to procreate children, and ephebuses to have solace! Plato dixit !

Then, calming down somewhat, he continued:

-I met Eleanor, his wife, several was a poor woman who was terrified, and who he did not make love NEVERMORE..Because of that. everyone knows that Anthony is not his son

-'You .. you comforted her , David? -Hotchner then asked, tired.

-A couple of Anthony is not my son. I almost would to infer that this was some Frank Van Houten's prank.

Hotchner wanted to finish everything as soon as possible, to talk openly with Spencer, face the reality of a relationship that no longer they could hide, and escape from the world..

Derek was seriously considering resigning from the BAU.

Rossi amused (it was obvious) , and the weak pretext of "saving institutions" now seemed a sort of cover for personal revenge.

-If this is revenge, I'm out, -said Morgan-Even more : I'm out of the BAU, and I will ask that for the resignation to be officially accepted..

-That what I decide, Derek.-pointed Aaron, seriously-Who I want out, and immediately, it's you, we have finished with this case, consider yourself lost in retirement availability.

Aaron thought delegate command again in Derek Morgan ,and get away with Spencer (as far as possible) of all that moral insanity that had contributed to the collapse of his life, his person, his physical and mental integrity.

-And Frank Van Houten? –asked Derek –I remember Gideon asking me to leave the cafeteria, because he could and wanted to defend himself alone.

- It was easy-Rossi took a curve at high speed, noting that L'Heureux and his people came behind them-When Frank made the mistake of hijacking the bus with the children, finally sealed his (after killing a woman named Ilse Flohs , which he previously sent a bouquet of chrysanthemums, the flowers he most detests), he took over FRank, and he even had the grace to dissolve his remains in a barrel of acid.

-If you know this , why did not you tell us?

- I was not active then , wasn't my business.

-Go! What freshness to wash your hands, David!

-I know why you're saying all this, Dave.-Aaron third –It is to make Derek having no remorse when pulling the trigger ,before Gideon could articulate a single the fact is that I'm still your boss,-he stressed - in case you've forgotten, and I wanted to hear the other bell's ,sick sociopath, I tell you I will go before all of you, and that Morgan will only fire if I, and only I, personally, give the order.

Morgan was the best shot of the bullets were always 's machiavellianism had gone so far as to use an honest man to end a case that considered ((it was more than obvious) like something personal.

-A man whom I owe all that I am, -'said Derek, not without a great sadness in his voice -He was the one who officially accused Buford of abuse me. He was who proposed me for the FBI, pulling me out a miserable ,monotonous life And he never asked me anything in change.I swear on my mother.

And it was true.

…..

(Gideon's residence in Combourg,at the same time)

The green liquid slowly bathed the white bun candy and capriciously poured into the fresh water, tinting it with her voluptuous litmus, turning then luxuriously into the famous white "louche"..

Gideon held the silver spoon in his left hand, while the right one was manipulating a bottle of Suissé, the finest and strongest of the Swiss absinthes.

-The time is approaching,-he said, offering the cup to Reid. -My life has been hard, but I have several things that I consider fortunate,..for to already rescue them,.Among them,the most important is to have known you.

Reid was visibly nervous.

- 'Drink,- said Gideon- This will help you..And think it's just an instant The events have precipitated, and this time,for once, not because of my fault,precisely.

Spencer stood up and hugged that singular man with all his might, stroking him feverishly.

- I have not had anything from you ... Your pleasure, I mean, your ... your climax, do not know it, and I booted eight spasms of incredible strength ...

-I told you they were only old tricks of this old man- Gideon smiled -But I guess I should show you before I had left.

Slowly,he unbuttoned his shirt;then,he undid the silver buckle of his black leather belt. Spencer gulped the glass of Suisse, and the liquid burned down his throat, foreshadowing the disaster.

Then he knelt in front of Jason Gideon, and eagerly sought the space between his legs.

-Creature …-murmured Gideon -If I had known you before!

After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed Spencer vigorously, and held him up, almost lifting him in the air.

-'No,' -he said,feeling himself horrorously repentant -Never!. Never on knees.! Never.! Let it so, creature!.You are too beautiful…too beautiful!

Spencer shook the embrace, and Jason devoured his mouth with a frantical kiss in which lived and lasted all his inmense pain, desire, anxiety, murderer rage ,and infinite sadness.

-We will be alone, '-said Jason, breaking the kiss,and spreading a little the hug'-Mrs Dutertre and her husband have gone to Rennes, to visit some friends and relatives..Please,promise me that they will live in this house when I will be no longer here. They were my only , and the cats that are out there, nameless and , and my birds, my habitual companions,which I asked every day for you ...

-Absolutely! .-Reid paused-But you expect someone else, right?

-Yes..I already said I'm not here to separate the lovers, but to bring them together.

Spencer was trembling:the perspiration had become a thick veil on his forehead and his hands: the thought of seeing Aaron under such unique circumstances terrified him.

-Aaron ... Aaron will come ,perhaps?

Gideon smiled, and went to embrace him breathing was painful.

- I'm here to gather you both,at the end of the most beautiful and perfect of all the you know?-He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, with his back to the windows,- I have always felt sorry because I knew all of you had seen my demise as a gesture of contemptuous abandonment.. I had continued to be there, maybe all of you,yourselves,would regret it,and everyone would have ended by asking me who I was for to insist resting there,after all my mistakes and my cowardice…I always would have been a negative note, an obscure you understand? Too much death does not look well with a black background, of course I know that you suffered more than the others.

-I loved you as a father.

-Yes, but I did not love you nor I love you just like a son-Gideon pulled him up to sit on his lap,and he murmured :-I adore you. Nobody will love you like me, not even Aaron:but you chose Aaron.

-If I had chosen you instead of Aaron ... it would have changed things?

Gideon sighed:

-' Not yet , unfortunately..Mi disease is very is terminal..It is an inherited gene, aggravated by my constant use of alcohol.I reached until drinking pure ethyl alcohol during my tremendous crisis of despair.I had delirium tremens…But-he raised his index-,even in delirium, I could see your face .. and it was enough for me to lie to mourn as a child, and scream your name,Spencer!The mere mention of your name and the mere memory of a lost smile,

saved me from falling deeper into the abyss.

Spencer shook the hug, and patted the hands of Jason Gideon with sincere affection.

-You were always so tight ,so hermetic with us ...- he said.

-'It did not interest me none but you.I think of to have been clear in the letter that I left before to go.

-Derek has affection for you, however.

-And I for him, but I could not get more involved than I already was. Derek is a honest man..Aarón is also a honest honesty was, for me, as a direct slap in the face, Spencer.I was born corrupt.

Spencer smiled:

- You saying about yourself what you never could never admitted even in the worst criminals.I think that Rossi is the speaker of the genetic theory of evil, as it has been stated by the Italian school, but you were always different.

-Yes, I have always thought that the social factor was decisive, if we can speak of a determinant, exactly ... But, in my case ...- He reached in his vest pocket, and pulled out a little black copybook-This is the story of my it,please, when I will be no longer here.

-You said a few months still missing …..

-Yes, but I can not retain you with me longer, even if I wanted, creature. You deserve to be may help Aaron to assume the reality of things ,as they truly are..That man is perhaps the best person I've ever met, but heconstantly lies to himself, and much.

And do not give me that admonition :" the regulation has forbidden any interpersonal relationship", because, in practice, this is not done .If Hotchner fears that he can not bear the weight of the relationship, then,he should resign immediately .I did the same, and I did not even have any relationship with you, except labour, and perhaps a slight friendship.

-You could have spoken then .You could have approached me to explain what you felt.

-You were already with .It wouldn't have made sense.

….

(A stop on the road Paris-Saint Malo, near Rennes)

-'There's something here that does not make sense, boss-Morgan said, while Rossi, after stopping the car in front of a gas station, approached the police car in which was coming L'Heureux, accompanied by a half dozen of effectives-Something ...

. -I think so too, Derek.

All the men went to the little cafe .Derek beckoned to Hotchner, and went into the bathroom.

. Once there, he turned his cell phone and dialed a number.

-Your computer siren, always at your service!

-Hello, my princess.I need you.

-Gee, Derek, I was deathly worried! Where are you?

-That's not matter.I am so far.. ... Well: I need to find out everything about the people whose names I am sending by private message., please.

-They are the victims?

-Yes, baby girl.Víctims of a serial murderer, we think ..Los crimes occurred in different countries: Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Spain., Argentina, France ..

(A constant clatter of keys began to be heard at the other side of the line.)

... ...

-Aha..You're in France, right?

-Yes.

-This is unofficial -?

- , baby girl...To anyone else… a deal?

-A deal ,marron glacé. In half hour you will have what all of these alleged victims ate during their first communion party, bar mitzhvah, etc, etc.

In the small cafe, Robert L'Heureux and his men were arguing heatedly in French with David Rossi.

Aaron ,sitting down apart, sipped his coffee served in an old thick slab cup ,eyes fixed in a vacuum.

Derek turned off his cell phone, left the bathroom and went to his boss.

. -In half an hour we'll know it for sure.

Aaron's olive face contracted in a grimace of fury.

-What did you do? You know I've given orders respect to this..You already know that nobody must be in this, except us.

- We can not risk being victims of an ambush. If this is a personal vendetta, which are arranged between them. My suspicion was born of a single sentence spoken by our ... "Supervisor", "Shoot to kill: no prisoners will be taken on this issue. "

. Hotchner was silent.

-I guess we can trust her-he said,after a while. -And I guess you have not mentioned ...

-No, of course.

-Whatever it is, his name should remain unblemished.

-Now you're the fanatic of the institutions?

Aaron stood up, and no muscle of his face led the interior martyrdom that he experienced.

-'I have reason to hate him more than anybody else-he said, very quietly –But I feel that everything crashes into a shadow. We are pursuiving a shadow…

….

(Combourg,,Ville d'Autrémont:the winter garden…At the same time)

The empty space in the middle of the semicircle formed by the carefully chosen three hundred three orchids indicated the absence of colchicum.

In a small black bottle, the kind that were common in old apothecaries, the root was mixed with laudanum, a little honey, wormwood, Madeira wine, and tincture of henbane(black and white) ,"the flowers of death."

- I knew you would not dare to press the doesn't matter yet. .Colchicum acts rapidly,it reaches within one hour to induce coma, and death is safe, easy, almost immediate,and painless..And, especially, clean..I've been a Judas, a Nero , a Caligula, a Erostratus..: but I will die as Socrate-he smiled- Anyway, if you think it is necessary shot, I do not expect anything else from you..Now., please, spit in the little bottle..I want your saliva as the vehicle of the poison, as the water of my death.

Spencer hesitated a moment then salivated at the , Gideon drained its content to the dregs .

_-_This has been is a Fact-he said, and went to the piano,.He steps were decise, sat down, and started playing the bars of the third movement of Rahcmaninov's second Concerto.

Spencer came up to him, and sat down in the lounge couch ,facing the windows-On the table there was a opened it. It was Verlaine, and they were his Saturnian verses.

(TO BE CONTINUED)


	8. Chapter 8

TOWER OF SILENCE

Chapter VIII:

**"les sanglots longs**  
Des violons  
De l'automne  
**Blessent** mon coeur  
D'une langueur  
M **o** n **o t** o ne. Tout suffocant  
Et blême, quand  
Sonne l'heure,  
**Je me souviens**  
**Des jours anciens**  
Et je pleure Et **je** m'en vais  
**Au vent mauvais**  
Qui m'emporte  
Deça , de lá,.  
Pareil à la  
feuille morte "

(P. Verlaine, Chanson d'automne)

(The deep whispers  
Of the autumn Violin  
are like  
a wound in the soul  
A wound of strange anguish  
without end.

Trembling,I remember  
This flight of time  
I left.  
Evoking the past  
and those distant days,  
I cry.

This wind blows  
a yesterday of darkness .  
It happens  
like a bad storm  
raising ,littering dried leaves …  
like I am)

The rustle of those dried leaves in the road leading to the small town sounded like a kind of clatter, so percussive, incisive, sometimes unbearable.

After leaving the car, and leaving aside L'Heureux and his people (hiding behind a low wall overlooking the cemetery and the Castle Forest), Aaron Hotchner nodded to Derek Morgan.

-Nothing, yet?

The brunette shook his head.

Wielding their weapons,they were protected as they usually did. Hotchner walked forward; then, Rossi, and Derek brought up the rear, slowing purposely his steps.

They were just leaves, a pungent smell of honeysuckle ,old dried flowers , a gust of wind, a dark cloud behind the tower : perhaps that slightly damp dew could become was a dead tree; an old blind fountain sorrounded by the little circle of boxwood; a statue(naked and mutilated);a bird.

It was that hopeless time when twilight begins to become evening.

No one could have imagined the storm and the persistent martyrdom that were shaking Aaron's soul.

He feared …but he also longed to know what had really happened: if Spencer was alive or dead, and in what wanted, (and at the same time fhe elt a terrible disgust, a sordid fear ) he carved to know every detail,even if it was the cruelest or the most infamous.

He knew that every man carries the constant fascination with death, and that its aphrodisiac effect competes with the desire of transmitting life.

He finally knew a new type of sorrow: the voluptuous pain of broken passion, jealousy, uncertainty, fear, anger, desire at their finest terrible insistence.

To embrace the one he adored, living or dead, maybe also cover the gloomy picture that awaited him with his tears, those tears that were pouring silently alone and only three times in his life .. (the death of his father, Hayley's sacrifice, Spencer Reid's farewell) ..

Aaron Naphtali Elijah felt his rebellion against the eternal blood pogrom that imposed him to voluntarily waive any staff of personal rebellion .Several centuries of atrocities (characteristics of what at least three millennia of historical hate did to his race) had prepared his heart to turn definitively like a stone.

That's when he heard the distant music, and when he saw the cats (the countless cats!) running in the presence of the three men who, somewhat apart, were marching in single file directly into an iron gate that had a sign ,an old badge with letters spent by time : "Ville d'Autrémont, 1679."

A name and a date.

He thought he heard something behind him: he saw Rossi crouching behind the small blind fountain,.and could hear him whisper, as if nodding:

-Rachmaninov.

Some yards behind, Morgan pressed the call button on his cell phone (an anachronistic detail amidst that timeless solitude), and could not hear, but he could see still with his hawk eyes, trained to foresee what indecipherable, how Morgan's face had turned pale.

And he could see him make a desperate sign.

Aaron fell, almost running.

-You will not believe, -said Derek, pale, with his features that,without words,were trying to explain what he could not understand- These young victims are alive ... they are alive.. ..., Aaron!

Clutching the arm of his subordinate and friend, Hotchner said, not without the slightest hint of surprise in his voice: -

-Is it safe?

-Absolutely.!One of them ..-Derek looked at the small screen of his iPhone.-, the so called Laforgue, the pianist, even today will give a concert at the Salle Pleyel ..

-So? -Aaron asked, and did nothing but ask to himself..

-Someone lies.. Someone (a narcissist, certainly, some diseased erostratomaniac needing of public) have simulated these crimes, to bring us up here..This is my personal theory.

Aaron had full confidence in the extraordinary ability of Penelope, and in the no less extraordinary good sense of Morgan.

So he insisted:

-Do you think we can trust Rossi?

Derek Morgan shook his head.

-I'm not so sure- he murmured.

…

(Gideon's private chamber,besides the winter garden,inside the the same time).

Suddenly,Spencer stopped reading to ask, softly:

-Could you do me one last favour, master?

Jason, while caressing the keys on the piano, and feeling himself full of poison in his veins (he barely perceived his legs, and began to experience blurred vision), tried to sound, however, natural:

-Anything, it is?

-Give me some anesthesic,some … soporipher drug. I don't want to see the time when Aaron…

-Are you afraid of to face him?-Gideon asked.

-What I fear is that he will not come alone .. The chances that he could come alone are very few.

-I know..But you, and only you,are the one who should be able to face this..It has caused great harm on you..It's time to speak clearly and openly.

-Also, if he come ... with Morgan..or Rossi –Reid continued-I do not know how to react ... They may think that I killed you, because you tried to force me .. Maybe (and this is the worst but most likely possibility, because statistically it is proven) they will think that it is you who abducted and tortured me.

-They are researchers of evil:as you were,and as I was .What do you want them to think? That this is a supreme act of pure love? Perhaps do you pretend that they could understand the secret poetry that lasts behind our pact?

-It might look like a suicide pact, and ...

shall not die..-Jason turned slightly to face Reid,with his eyes like glassy: obviously he could not see he sighed,painfully.

'-I have ice on my legs –he said, finally.

Spencer approached, sitting on the carpet, and stroked Jason's limbs ,that were so rigid, like tetanised: they felt frigid as irretrievably dead.

-They shall not have the happiness of to execute me, or to get a single word from me.

His hands were clinched.,but he already attempted to caress Reid's hair.

He even had the strength, however, to draw his Eibar 38 special, which was on a low table next to the piano.

-Let's finish with all of this,and say no more ... I want to give me a good time to tear this fucking useless life, dammit!.

….

(In the sorrounding garden)

A single shot rang out in the garden, after the sudden interruption of the music.

It was only an instant.

-Reid!-Hotchner cried-Reid! My God! REID!

He ran with the forces and momentum that only grant despair and delirium.

Morgan, with a bound, stood beside him.

Finally ,they situated themselves outside the entrance ,almost with the speed of light.

-Clear !-cried Morgan,pointing to the living room.

-Upstairs? -asked Rossi.

-In the lobby that is opening onto the conservatory- Hotchner murmured , and he crouched beside the door frame.

The brutal rose of blood covered the carpeted floor around the piano. The body looked fallen down on its side, and almost in a fetal position. His eyes and mouth were still open.

Derek looked away, horrified.

Standing next to the bloody offal, blood stained himself, with capriciously crimson splashed stains on his tense face , painless, contracted, but apathetic, still clutching the Eibar 38 special,it sadly stood a victorious Spencer Reid.

He turned slowly to face features were not accusing any kind of emotion, but his eyes were full of tears.

-Aaron –he whispered, almost inaudibly ...

Hotchner lowered his weapon, and saved with a jump the distance between them, hugging Reid against his chest, almost wanting to embed him in his heart, as he had done after Hänckel's affair..

-Spencer ... -Aaron muttered, and his voice was softer than usually.-Spencer, I'm here, and do not worry, my life ...and nothing else matters.

Derek ("My life What the hell ...?" ,he said to himself ) bent over Gideon's corpse, whose face he had a hard time recognising as his once good friend, teacher and had stubble, and very long hair, which sought uselessly to cover his balding was horribly emaciated, consumed; his now dead body seemed to be little more than a bag of bones.

Rossi lit a cigarette, in a gesture of olympic contempt :.

-Thank you, my dear Spencer-he said, speaking to Reid in a tone that sounded like strangely relaxed-We've saved time and bullets here.I would applaud you, if I were not sure that Aaron certainly would disapprove the gesture.

Reid looked up, without leaving the safe haven of Aaron's chest, and said:

-You have nothing to be thankful for, nor to applaud, doctorRossi. This isn't a victory;this is a disgrace ... a huge I do not want to think that it is also an injustice ..

-He's right, David,' -said Derek -Gideon did not kill those victims. Everything was false.

-I wonder if you knew that, David? If you knew it was all a sham, and if you bring us here this far deceived ?Should I take it that you were complicit in the madness of Gideon ?Or should I infer that it was a plan (truly diabolical) to deliver to get back at him ..?- asked Aaron.

Rossi shrugged, and walked toward the exit.

-Maybe so, '-he said-Or maybe what you want, Aaron.

Hotchner's voice again became steadfast, strong, recovering all his usual aplomb:

-When we get back to Quantico, you'll explain me this with details..I will be inside., and you, of course, you're out. Dismissed.

'-Oh yes, of course ... Now is your lover who demands full attention, right?

Rossi's almost mockingly words almost dragged Morgan to commit a silliness:.

-Will you shut up, David?

David made a gesture with his hand in the air, and went out into the conservatory.

-He took a mixture of poisons'- began Reid, weakly-He was doomed to die of irreversible liver cirrhosis, it was a matter of few did not want to end miserably, spitting poisoned himself because I hesitated to oppress the trigger..But he was suffering visibly much: the process of poisoning was too long .. You were coming .. I did not want to see him fall apart even more ... He took the pistol,and pointed it to his chest: his hand were shaking horribly ... I put my hand on the gun, snatched it, and finally pulled the trigger..My traces and fingerprints are still there, along with his , Aaron,I have to fulfill his request, his last will..His his corpse must be cremated immediately, and ashes scattered on the island where the poet Chateaubriand is buried .He was his ancestor on his motherline , and a symbol of a world he loved, and that had died long before he was born.

-We can not ignore the legal requirements .The French police stomps behind us..They will want to do the autopsy.-Hotchner said.

-Tell us, -asked Derek- Reid,please…He was the one who pretended the crimes for to make us come here ?.

Reid shook his head.

-I know nothing about that-he murmured, and raised his eyes to meet the gaze of Aaron, those pupils in perpetual mourning which saw himself reflected-Help me , Aaron .. please ... I gave my solemn promise….

'-Certainly,-' said Aaron.-Of course.

…..

(Island of the Grand Bé)

(Rachmaninov Concerto no. 2, second movement: Adagio sostenuto).

The ceremony was brief, were only Reid, the Dutertre couple (drowned in tears), and, at a safe distance, Aaron, Derek and Rossi.

"Goodbye, friend and teacher," Morgan said, his eyes following the quiet flight of the ash in the autumn wind. "I can never say I've really known you."

Aaron found himself buried in a contradictory sea of feelings..His mind flew to the days of youth, when he had the opportunity to attend one of Gideon's was so amene then, so warm, with a simple treatment, so fine and gentle. ... She wanted to remember him so..

Or perhaps as a vague shadow that was dissolved in the night leaving the cabin in the woods would have wanted to recite the Kaddisch prayers (after all, Jason was half Jewish), but he hardly remembered them..He murmured, then, a loss stanza of the Kol Nidrei.

Rossi was the one that could appeal the most to the background, often painful, of remembrances..He closed his eyes, and the malevolent smile of a boy with long dark brown hair, insolent eyes, tall stature and strange beauty suddenly appeared to him.

He felt that, perhaps, in his youth, he had loved him as a haunting presence is worthy to be loved. He was looking tasty, yet dangerous and always tantalizing..Jason was beautiful in those distant days..Later , the bitterness snatched up the same shade which he had become ..

Rossi suffered the pangs of love-hate-love and the terrible sense of the irreparable, all in one, when, seeing the ashes flying, he knew that something was going on forever in the wind next to that little handful of gray dust.

And then it was when his chest burst into tears.

He fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands, and almost shouted:

-Why ?…Why, my God, why? Fucking life, bitch, bitch life!

Derek was going to approach him, but Aaron nodded:

-Let him has already his own punishment..

….

The subsequent procedures and paperwork, the appeals to old friends and acquaintances in the INTERPOL to circumvent Spencer's intervention in the death of Gideon (declared officially as "suicide"), are part of what is bureaucratically anecdotal.

Three nights at the Village Inn they still had to endure before they can take flight back to America.

During one of those nights, Aaron left Spencer after making him sleep in his arms like a child, went down to the pub for a drink, recommending Derek ( the three occupied the same room) to be alert in case the boy woke , and asked for his presence.

He wanted to erase the terrible images of the crematorium, the smell of charred flesh, the sight of that inert mouth kissed by Reid before it became ashes ...

He ordered a cognac and lit one of the Gauloises he had found in the house, in an already open pack .The tobacco tasted strong, hot, dry ,so feverish as the sick mind of the one who used to smoke them.

At an adjacent table, a remnant of man, drunk, hopelessly drunk,was humming a tune of unmistakable sadness.

It was bit his lower lip: Maybe now, drunk as never before,he finally could tell all the truth.

Without a word, he walked over to his table and sat down opposite him..Rossi seemed not to have noticed him: his eyes were fixed on the bottom of his glass of Pernod.

-David, -Aaron started to say, -I need to know the whole truth.

Hiccuping, Rossi said:

-Why, diamine? (Demon) .I am out of this..You already said it ,yourself.

Aaron looked at David's hand..He was grasping something that he clearly wanted hidden.

-What are you hiding there?

-Nothing .. ...

Aaron declined to show initiating a struggle, but finally Rossi's hand opened, and he saw the other Eibar 38, the twin of the murder weapon.

-You're going to make silly?-he asked –This is pretty strange coming from one so cold as you .If yopu kill yourself, it would be an act of manifested irrationality, which does not gel with your personality.

-Cold ! See you talk!

-Rossi, you're making people look at us.

-Me ne frega!

-Rossi, I need to know everything, but absolutely all the truth.I promise you that no one else will know.

-And what does it matter? He is no longer suffering, and I am free. Do you have an idea of what I have lost?

'-I've lost things in my life, too,and too many,please, remember ... Things and people I have loved ... Hell, Dave! We were friends at one time! You were with me when I lost my wife! You were one of those who held her coffin during the funeral! My son has a boundless affection toward you! Let me join you in this terrible hour! Let me know the "what", the "why" and the "how"!

-What you want is to make me tell you if I knew in advance about the murders. .No. Dall'Abaco got me the dossier after L'Heureux wrote to me that he had received a letter.

-A letter?Perhaps from Gideon ?…

-It had no sender, and was written using a typewriter..We never could identify it: perhaps it was an old Remington, like the ones used in the Bureau thirty years ago.

-It could have been him:it was his style.

-Maybe.

He paused, his eyes fixed on the alcohol, like searching for the strength that had abandoned him forever.

-You do not know what I lost-he repeated -You have not the slightest idea.

Aaron took a sip of cognac, lit another cigarette, and looked decidedly at Rossi, with that inquisitorial looks of his,with the " unbearable and unsustainable look ", as Spencer had baptized it.

-Did you love him, David? –Aaron asked.

Silence.

Aaron insisted:

-You can tell me: he's no longer alive:did you love him?

For the only answer, Rossi began to mourn as a child, with his head on the table, mumbling unintelligible words in Italian, as in a monotonous singsong.

Aaron called the waiter, ordered a double espresso and a glass of water, and gave him to drink.

'-Here,please, drink this.

Rossi drank the water in small sips, still sobbing, and ,with a brief moment of painful hesitation,he began.,so quietly:

-After I slipped the trailer, as I said, he came to my hotel room, and he practically stalked me..I rejected him vigorously,after a first moment of absolute perplexity..He strongly urged me to let him go with me to California (I had told that I had thought to go to live there). He abandoned Frank (whom never forgave him, as it became clear later), and we traveled together to San rented one crummy little room near the were very poor, but we felt absolutely happy-. He sighed, and raised his index finger,like in a gesture of admonition-No, contrary to what you might be thinking, Aaron,we never had ..

-'I'm not thinking about anything -Hotchner said,-I'm only listening.

Rossi smiled bitterly.

-He used to call me "little bourgeois pig", because he knew my family owned a large grocery store in Philadelphia. …and we used to fight hardly….but also laughing, hugging us….yes,laughing to mourn ... Yes, to mourn.

When I met who would later become my first wife, after making peace with my family and recover my lost welfare ,he was so enraged that he did not speak to me for a long ,of course, he was not present in the wedding. Although he sent a splendid present: the Divine Comedy in a beautiful bilingual edition, with illustrations by Gustave Doré.In the famous chant on the forest of suicides (suicides turned into trees in Dante's Inferno), just where it bitterly complains an "anonymous Florentine suicide" ,he wrote, in pencil: "JMG".

He meant that he was a placed number for suicide.

Did I really love him?

I never asked this to he really love me?.He never said it..But when my wife gave birth to my only child ,and the little baby boy died inmediatley after , the only hand that landed on my shoulder, and the only one that welcomed my crying in his shoulder, were his.

When he wrote that he was about to marry, I could not believe to his gesture, I also refused to go to the wedding, but I got a call that night from a hotel in Los was from him. He asked me to go out that night to join him in a hotel room.

-Just in his wedding night?! I heard right?! -Aaron's eyes almost danced in their sockets, and it was not because of the alcohol ,precisely.

-I flew to him,and… heard it well...I don't know why, but I flew to his side.. He had rented an entire suit in that hotel,for me .. for the both of we were there, talking and drinking, playing chess and discussing Lacassagne's theories. We hugged,strongly,as never before, always laughing and crying, at the same time..We were drunken ,of course.. But I was never literally devoured with kisses as I was that night….

(CONTINUED) ...


	9. Chapter 9

TOWER OF SILENCE

**Chapter IX:**

"... So, At That Hour When Time slips from us,  
are we wedded to Whom I stood before him,  
and With The sacrament of his kiss I signs himself unto us,  
and makes us of one flesh With Him. '"

(Simeon Solomon, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep)

**-Everything was all so ambiguous and confusing- continued David-, and I hardly knew what was happening between passed: time, events, milestones, and other ones less so; the question about Anthony's paternity (no, he is not my son; his father was one of the many ills that Eleanor used to take revenge of Jason); my divorce;his divorce; the military life in Afghanistan, when he came home covered with wounds, and I took care of him day and night, leaving all for to moist those feverish with a few drops of water, and he begged me for a kiss that I repeatedly refused ...**

**Then came the founding of the unit, in which we put everything we had, and still lectures, tours, research, books, awards and recognition we received throughout everyone for himself, and altogether.I already say with conviction: I was always good, but he was certainly the best one .Without any doubt.**

**After the accident in which I lost my left eye, as I had done with him,he did not leave my side for a single wasn't neither eating nor sleeping: he just watched beside me, sitting next to my bed.I remember him joking in public,before the doctors and nurses, sayingthat I would be now like Hannibal or Wotan ,an in famous one-eyed guy.. But, alone, when I felt asleep, he wept bitter tears ,so desperate as I had never seen before in a man .He caressed and kissed me , whispering that he would have gladly given me his eyes, because he was tired of seeing so much misery and human filth ... He called me: "life of his life and soul of his soul" ...Those words broke my heart, and I know he wasn't pretending always used to feel guilty about anything ,even about what could not be avoided, as if he weighed on his head the image of living in eternal guilt of all of this,he used to drink as a sponge, increasingly, to the point that, when he was summoned by your superior orders he was really and absolutely sick ... and the disease was alcoholism.A legal technical euphemism turned it , however, into post traumatic stress.**

**After that time, time of continuous fatigue and superhuman efforts(time when we slept together more than once ,embraced, knowing that we were not allowed to explore all that separated the torso from the waist ), I decididely came to my retirement (not sure if it was due to my personal fear,a sort of constant feeling that I would have to work day and night beside him) , and then was when I received the letter in which he said that, at last, as never before in his life, he had fallen in love.**

**He regretted that the "little freak of nature, endowed with all the gifts as a budding dark archangel" (the pompous phrase could only be yours) was still almost a child, barely pubescent, absolutely innocent in his naive beauty and natural astonishing beauty and his sweeping intelligence had blinded him to such an extent that, contrary to every principle established by Regulation (the damn rules!), he himself became his personal mentor, risking even Van Houten (who still walked by Nevada) would be able to hunt him. Then he did not care to live "in the capital of tacky and outlandish raids" (as he called Las Vegas), because it meant being close to his subject of took him to Berkeley, with the resulting scandal ( a boy of fourteen, a little genius presented by a renowned protector ... whom, unfortunately,had a very bad reputation in his private life.)** "

**Rossi paused, and took a long sip of coffee..During that pause, Aaron felt like if the universe was collapsing again over universe whose order was blind. His arm was clawing to feel that nails were bleeding in a superhuman effort to hold on to his poor, low, miserable hope.**

**-'Do you know if anything…. could have happened then?- he asked, and then he,the SSA Aaron Elijah Nephtali Hotchner , the man who never recoiled before anyone or anything, confessed to himself: "I am a coward."**

** personal ethics (because he had it , but twisted and incomprehensible to the others) did not allow boy was only fourteen, and, except for his overwhelming intellectual superiority, he yet behaved as a c Gideon looked happy in his role as an adoptive father .Proud and happy.**

**One day he came home to talk to me exclusively about that boy.A fact, he spoke quite showed me photographs (he was a freak: photographing all the people around him, and displaying the images in front of him, looking intensely, insistently, as devouring with eyes). Then ,he played the piano most of the afternoon, and he said he knew I could infer all just listening to the music.**

**-And could you?**

**-Yes,I know very well that, when he wanted, he knew how to be understood without words.**

**Rossi paused;then,he lit a cigarette, and said, gravely:**

**-Now, besides all this, and responding to your constant demand : yes, I thought, indeed, that the crimes had really taken place. With L '**Heureux and I ** received the photographs, with no return address, finding the names of the alleged ví stay dates coincided with Gideon's visits to the countries involved in the issue.-Rossi punched furiously on the table -And I believed this…I believed he was a murderer! Someone who had done what he did with Frank Van Houten, and with that prostitute, someone who had punished in a way as ruthless as when, at the time, rushed to the ones who humbled Reid at the University, was well capable of this, and even more!**

**Aaron shook, and made efforts to do not show he soon felt that he should not worry about whether the disturbance was manifested or was like something coming suddenly to him: he felt that everything was useless.**

**-The fault was mine, maybe –Rossi continued -I should have researched more have seen: Garcia solved it all with a simple clic. Regarding who sent those letters and those photos, and why the hell he did it , I have no more blooding doomed idea.**

**David sighed long, finished his coffee, settled his long gray raincoat, and took his hat.**

**-I shall not go back to America .So…this is the goodbye in my name to the others, please.**

**-Wait !One more detail…**

**-What?**

**-Why did you counsel us to shoot at kill?** **And how did he know we were coming?**

**-Because he had asked me to do so. And he knew we were coming because he asked me for to notice of this I wasn't worried about Spencer: I knew he wasn't in a real danger.**

**-Did you already know that Gideon was sick of terminal cirrhosis?** **Since then?**

**-I always knew the beginning of his I was always in the disposal of to seem cruel and inhumane if it could save him from more pain..He had already suffered too much in this life -he sighed,doing a long ,he continued:**

** -What can I say ... I advise you as a friend, not as a professional: Aaron, please,take care..When one has lost the sense of reality towards a chimera, when things are stripped of their materiality and everything becomes confusing, and diluted in a reverie that never stops ... it is pain that , with pain, it comes always of the soul, loneliness of spirit, a disease that is increasing over time, and exhausts us, kills us, little by little, drinking our life dropwise.**

**-That's what happened to him?**

**David nodded.**

**-And to me- he said, before slowly leaving the door open to the night, for the last touch of a dark past that definitely had evaporated when tossing that handful of ashes.**

**An old photograph and the Eibar special were left on the ón put the gun in his pocket, and looked at the picture, which, in the dim light of the lamp, it acquired the tinge of a phantasmagory .It was Gideon (he would have little more than twenty years in that picture, but Aaron recognized him instantaneously,at that "unmistakable aura" emanating from a familiar , rare light, incisively coming from the apple of his eye), probably dressed for a party,in the costume of a swashbuckler, with mustache and goatee to the Spanish; long hair, almost black, and again those bright eyes, lit by a malignity that was a sly mixture of tenderness, infinite wit, insolent contempt and helplessness .. Atrocious eyes wrenching on a smiling face ... Aaron recognized in that vicious young lad the features of a pure blood Sephardi . "strong warrior." El unbeatable.**

**He was beautiful in that distant time, without experienced an immense pity for him, for Rossi, and for himself.**

**He drained his glass, then stored the picture in the same pocket with a strange kind of mercy he was surprised by how deep and unusual, and went upstairs.**

…

**The journey was tiring, but almost a relief compared to the events that had been left behind.**

**Derek fortunately didn't do more only asked if Rossi would accompany them back home, and, to meet face to face with the silence of Aaron, silent, he headed his headphones, and got lost into his world.**

**Before boarding he bought perfume for all the girls, and also to his mother, sisters, aunts and cousins, plus a magnificent ring of great beauty, extremely has not need to ask who was the addressee of this last special present . Derek spent all he had, and he did so with great pleasure and infinite affection.**

**Aaron felt a healthy envy: why he could not do as Derek, whom intelligence had managed to get along with a simple heart, noble and affectionate?**

**Why, in the narrow world of Naphtali Elijah Aaron Hotchner, everything was subject to a permanent structure, which depended on the environment settings, circumstances, and even expectations, desires, aspirations, etc., of others?**

**A pogrom mentality, certainly: a permanent spirit of ghetto strictly controlled from within the ruins ... that is not noticed from the outside.**

**Unscathed hieratic, severe, with eyes shining like sparks mourning inquisitive, digging through the stinking reservoir of human misery: he had been trained well, because it had been raised so , and so was his father's world, and his grandfather's, and his great-grandfather's, in the Jewish quarter of Prague.**

**During the trip, Spencer was dozing with his head on Aaron's chest, like clinging to a shelter that he, Aaron, could not offer.**

**Thank God, the boy slept almost the entire period of the long journey, or remained in the intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness (that world of shadows and delusions), muttering incoherent words (perhaps still circulating in their blood the remains of those infamous substances ), curling up like a hungry child in search of the chest to be fed.A c hest that was dry, hurt, tired, but could not afford to show not one of his wounds.**

**Sometimes he looked up, glancing at Aaron with his beautiful sleepy eyes, barely open, asking something that did not quite put into words, and he, Aaron responded with silence and more silence, stroking her hair soaked in sweat, wrapping the strands that stuck to his forehead, dying for to place a kiss on it, but without the capability of to do it, feeling exhausted forces in a mere gesture that never came to fruition.**

…

**(Back at Quantico)**

**It took several weeks to ordain and arrange redacted his irrevocable resignation, signed it , and submitted it to his superiors, resulting joy of the Strauss woman , who looked at last free from her most hated obstacle.**

**He would not go more into it, accusing her of blatant discrimination and anti-Semitism, but made it clear that he had suffered countless humiliations by that proud woman, who filled his mouth calling him "fagot Jew dog" in how many times she may be put before him.**

**Derek would take command again: he was more than qualified to do so, and he would have also, the help of a special kind of very experienced man, as it was Sam Cooper, the best at what they were doing, only just a step below .. the master.**

**After congratulate Derek on his upcoming wedding (he had finally decided to make Penelope throw downstairs her absurd "operetta fiancé"), Aaron went to his lonely apartment (his son Jack was at his sister Ruth's, in DC) waiting for the acceptance of his resignation.**

**When the phone rang (he had spent just over a month since his return), he thought he wasfrom the office for the confirmation.**

**But it was a long distance call: Ms. Mariangela Rossi Di Leonardo, whose beautiful villa in the Neapolitan coast David had taken as a refuge, announced to him that his brother, the former chief Supervisor of the BAU , had died of a stroke , two days ago.**

**A shiver ran not only Aaron's body ,but also his soul.**

**("Aaron, take care ...")**

**He was still under the effect of the news ,shocked by what had occurred ,when he received the call he had been waiting.**

**His resignation had been finally accepted unconditionally.**

….

**(Refectory of the Urquhart's psychiatric clinic ,, in Chevy Chase)**

**The nurse accompanied Spencer until his stared at him,in boy looked somewhat better, but still he had not said a word.**

**-I'm going to get you out of here -'said Aaron- We will go away from this . I'm taking the child also with us: I will situate him in a boarding bilingual school.-**

**He clutched the white hand, which felt cold, as if he had run out of blood,and continued:**

**-But please my life .. please ... speak ... say a word ...**

**In response, Spencer looked up, and stared at him, until his tears sprout, that eyes veiled in mourning were bathed like a in slow,painful rain ...**

**-Tell me something .. for mercy! ... Aaron insisted, and his voice muffled.**

**It had been a month that Spencer had joined the clinic after intense depressive symptoms, which led him to an almost catatonic had crumbled just when the plane touched down in America.**

**His lips were eyes,like his climax of pain and despair, Aaron had to solve the indefinite medical leave, interning him in Urquhart's clinic, one of the best institutions specialised in this type of of this together with the formalities of his resignation, and the rest of the unit with their damn questions, and the Strauss woman laughing in his face ... And Rossi, who had died so suddenly, and so far ... without have said goodbye ...**

**Aaron wondered how far he could bear.**

**And,perchance for the first time in all his life, he made a bold decision in the area of his own privacy.**

**After leaving Spencer in the refectory, he asked to speak to Urquhart, and let him know that he would take Reid with him.**

**Urquhart, contrary to his expectation, nodded, smiling:**

**-That's exactly what I was going to propose, Dr. Hotchner. Dr. Reid is not really sick: if we look at the characteristics of his actual state, I will tell you that it is anything but a form of post traumatic stress: a type of shell shock. In order: you know enough about human behaviour to having to waste my time (and make it miss you, too) with more explanation.**

**That said, he signed what Hotchner asked him, and after a brief nod, he retired.**

…..

**A week later, after to have seen Spencer spending seven days with his chin resting on his knees, hearing continually the second concert of Rachmaninov in twenty different versions, and still without having uttered word, given the desperate look of Aaron, both the lovers ( accompanied by the little Jack, for whom everything was a kind of game) left the country, for to do not return nevermore.**

(TO THE EPILOGUE….)


	10. Chapter 10

THE TOWER OF SILENCE:

Epilogue:

(Music: Violin Concerto No.2 by Max Bruch: First movement)

(Location: Cabo Polonio, Uruguayan coast, a year and a half later)

-What do we have here? ... Oh, I see, I see! Another conch!

-Síiiiiiiiiiii! Yeah, Uncle Spencer!

Jack's little eyes shone like small coals stolen from the sea while Reid "mined" skillfully snails of his hair and ears.

The laughs were like a chorus of bells with foam, distant sirens and joyous shouts of fishermen.

-Now, let's go to prepare the books and copybooks, that you leave early morning to school.

Aaron was smoking,supported under the door into the small staircase that separated the house from the beach, while watching the sea..

It had been a brutal year, with time elapsing at breakneck speed, devouring hours and minutes, evaporating the days: the arrival in Buenos Aires, to settle in the department that Spencer had inherited; the contacts with distant relatives who put him in touch with the Hebrew school to enroll in it to Jack; the comings and goings to arrange the details of their future support; the wandering looking for a suitable location that would allow them to get away from the world..First, really,it was the trip to Ushuaia, looking for the distance of the Tierra del , the return to Buenos Aires, a city that had seemed wonderful to them, but also full of pitfalls. They could not forget that the one whose shadow they had suffered for so long was a regular visitor to the Southern capital: not in vain he had written not less than three books on criminological aspects in the stories of Borges, and a highly celebrated study on serial murderers of that country for them so far and strange..A sort of Paris city amid a fantasy, with a touch of expressionist haze ,some romantic Dickensian brushstrokes , and a smug air of Southern nonchalance .

Spencer loved Buenos Aires, but he also felt overwhelmed by it.

A tourist agency provided them with guidance on the Uruguayan coast, which contained a site without electricity, no gas, no cell signal, no internet, no cars, no clackson horns .. A fishing village with little tourism, quiet and reserved: Punta del Diablo in Cabo Polonio.

. Having rented the apartment in the neighbourhood of Palermo to a couple of friendly Germans, and after to manage the transfer of Jack to a boarding bilingual school in Montevideo, they left for the small neighbouring country, feeling that ,at last, they had found their place in the world.

They purchased (with the income from properties that Spencer received in inheritance that allowed them to live more comfortably, helped by the dollar exchange) a house by the beach, not very big, but comfortable, and an all-terrain vehicle( a Land Rover), to move easily from the village to the capital to pick up Jack in the summer, and to return him to the boarding school for the school year.

At that shred the world they still had, however, certain bonds of sociability.

The main character of the people was an old fisherman, an Englishman, former whaler and currently the only inhabitant of the lighthouse:people called him Don Welsey.

And ,so,Aaron had become, also "Don Aaron," and he did not disgust endless rounds of mate and gin, and the equally endless games of cards..

Don Welsey had approached them. when he heard, after a while, the native language, "but painfully misrepresented"("not even Irish!"). He immediately inferred that the odd couple of fellows,was a couple of Americans.

But Spencer was understood by him almost immediately ,overall after to have seen the young lad stopping by to recite the verses of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.:

"Water, water, every where,  
And all the boards did shrink;  
Water, water, every where,  
Nor any drop to drink .. "

In short: the inveterate distrust of the English man for their "children once spurious" was defeated once again, by the pen of a poet.

And by the mellifluous voice, yet almost childlike, of Spencer William Reid.: a voice that softly licked (but also cruelly remarked ) every word, as if they were made of the same oozing of the sea.

Reid was nearing almost thirty-three years old , and he had never been more almond coloured hair fell without any reservations to below his had put on some weight, so his corporal forms acquired full roundness :he was a beauty in the right point of ripeness, like a ripe fruit. Aaron, meanwhile, was showing clearly the marks of the premature ageing. He hid his almost fifty years behind the beard he wore on his face :it looked sharp and hieratic ,and also as a touch of carelessness, or perhaps it was pure patriarchal severity, while his hair fell also almost to his shoulders, and clearly reveal the threads of time at the temples (a detail that Spencer loved).

The Englishman used to come at night to play the guitar, to discuss things from the sea,to hear the old ballads recited by Spencer, and he was visibly moved by the verses of Ossian-McPherson, of Coleridge and Keats, Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.

The prodigious memory of Spencer kept intact every line.

In the meantime,

Aaron looked at his lover with a quiet devotion, and got into the vapours of gin and black snuff, as if to grasp a dream in which he, Aaron, was the permanent spectator of a star, that,however, he could still caress with his hand .. although he knew it was hopelessly distant.

The summer came to an end, and with it, Jack vacations also ended.

The child had adapted perfectly (as all children!), when he was surrounded by new friends at school, and in the played football with the fishermen's children, spoke Spanish River Plate as any "botija"("jug": Uruguayans' name given to creatures), and Aaron swore he'd never seen him grow so happier and freer.

For that night Spencer had promised a party to dismiss the summer, around the campfire,on the beach, with magic numbers, costumes and dance.

Aaron smoked while watching the sea, wondering, once again, what kind of surprise could countain the box that Spencer had gathered at the port of Montevideo,on the last week.

He smiled, and assumed that Reid's pigeons would fly over the children's heads , like those that he had suddenly awaken in his soul that distant night in the north, when he,Spencer, surrendered to him..To him, to Aaron,whom, since the first moment he had seen Spencer's face, adored him in silence.

And nothing had changed, however..Aaron continued worshiping him in silence.

At night (except when it was Jack who was always sleeping with his father), when he was lying beside him, Spencer turned his head to the window that overlooked the sea, and Aaron, linking, hugged her waist from behind, in a delicate embrace, that he wanted be like a gesture of possession, and that was almost religious devotion.

It might seem a joke, but they never had sex again.

The relationship was now made of looks, of soft sporadic caresses , of words that rested unspoken, of immense (and intense) silences.

Once, while they were in bed and almost asleep both of them ,Spencer said:

-Aaron ... what will you do when I die?

-Don't even mention it., my life,please ...

-Well, no..but…but .. I am still curious…

-I shall die with you.

-You can't:you have a son.

-I suppose that when it happens he will be an adult, and have already made his life, and damn if he could want to hear about me ...

-Why do you despise yourself so much, Aaron?

The question was totally out of context, since it belonged to a time that both wanted desperately to forget.

Although not quite. Aaron was writing his memoirs, and Spencer wrote in a little black book which clearly did not want it to be read by anyone, not even for him.

-Do you know, Aaron. …you, who have served in Pakistan and Central Asia, which is a djaméh?

-A tower of silence- Aaron said, and felt a chill that was walking by his dorsal spine -A place to leave the dead.

-Exactly. It has been conceived or to allow raptors do the work that you can not trust to the purity of water, earth or fire.

-Is that what you want, when you die?

-No, Aaron, I want to be thrown into the sea. I was amking allusion of it simply because this will be the title of my book.

-How so?

-It's what we have experienced in the BAU, exactly what we have lived and the way how the spoils came left the corpses to the raptors..We attempted to do not contaminate anything with them, leaving the vultures do their job ,tearing eyes , tongue,… devouring and crushing with their picks ... and we waited for the bones will bleach in the ossuary; then we removed them and developed the corresponding case file.

He paused, and then turned, staring into the dark eyes of his lover:

-Do youou know, Aaron,that I enjoyed killing him? Do you know that I celebrated his death,like a mutual release? ... -He bit his lower lip- ... However .. And yet ... -he sighed- I had already killed people before.I remember even that I saved your life killing a man for the first time ,after to have received that formidable beating you gave to me, pretending your hatred and your annoyance to see yourself in the company of "an useless piece of nothing that only serves to whining and to ask for his nursing bottle ", as I remember you called me ... Of course I loved you since that day, I loved your mock insults, and even feared (but wanted!) that they were true..But that ... That was different:that was only a matter of work,a matter of duty..This ... was you know which was the last thing ... he ... told me before he died bled,like a dog? (because he bled immediately, as you came: Ididn't hit him in the chest, but in the belly ... on purpose). He said "I adore you and take you with me, for

"A man's character is his fate" –Spencer sighed again ... -And he died for what it was, like a poor miserable dog ,so old and sick, too cowardly even to be rabid.

Ignoring the sadness that had been planted in Aaron's face, or his own sadness, Spencer continued:

-I did everything as promised, however.I closed his eyes; I kissed him before being placed into the crematorium, and the ashes scattered in the Grand Bé.But it was then-Spencer lifted hisr long-tapered forefinger-, yes, it was then, when the ash started flying in the wind of that autumn ,so sad, so tragic, that I understood everything..I could hear Rossi sobbing,I foresaw,I felt his immense pain , when it was supposed he was enjoying a kind of triumph. And right there, facing the sea, I realised how much we had been manipulated by Gideon,who made us think and say what he wanted.;I realised how dreadful was the fact of to have been his personal automata, his puppets, his stooges, Aaron. He programmed us that we should be fit and able to wallow in excrement, in the dregs, in the most foul of the psyche ... of the human soul .While he didn't commit no crime either , I think he wanted,he needed the crimes , since each of them was used to show off his "infinite capacity of phenomenological knowledge as a researcher of evil. "

Reid took something from the nightstand :it was a little black book.

-My book is based entirely on his ,it shall be the most horrible book ever written.. But I do not care, I swear, Aaron, I do not care!.The world must know who we are, whom they entrusts their safety and tranquility, and from whom they derive the alleged "knowledge of the truth." This book contains the most terrible details of what I assume will be a candid autobiography (I believe) of Jason Gideon and the deranged universe created by him..If you talked toRossi that night, you know what I mean.

Aaron was going to say something, but Spencer stopped him:

-Wait, Aaron, let me finish, , the girls, you ... including myself, we did not deserve this!.We firmly believed in what we were doing; we were confident that we were free to think, to reason, to decide..But it was not so! Rossi was the only one who knew, and he did not say a word..But he did not tell us because he couldn't!. "He" …Gideon…was dominating everything,despite time, distance and all the possible differences .Rossi, in his strange way, loved him….and desperately..But,of course,. He couldn't stay at his side. ... "He"(Gideon) should want to swallow him; so Rossi walked away. '"He" used to swallow those who were with him, no matter was his way of love ...?. Maybe he thought it was something else ,and not love….Who can know!

Aaron's blood ran cold inside his reasoning was not at all typical of Reid was a sort of morbid voyeur, incisive and voracious, he was still empathetic, and always showing up some strange kind of mercy ,some sweetness,even when he tried about the most nasty details.

-Stop torturing yourself with that, and do not talk anymore about him, please, terrify me ... and ...

Spencer suddenly had hugged him, kissing him dispelled any hint ,any shadow of doubt:it was a kiss of sea salt with a sweet aftertaste of caramel and coffee.

And they never talked about it after that time, but Reid was still writing in the mysterious little black book.

….

The flames of the fire cut the deep blue sky, greeting the night, after an evening of purple and gold.

The shouts and chants glad the beach, and ... yes, indeed, they had flown pigeons, flapping on the astonished heads of the"botijas"( "jugs"): they barely knew nothing but the sea, boats and fishing nets, sand and the school in the village, with the slate and perhaps sad monotone voice of the old teacher.

All children wore a disguise: pirates, clowns, fairies, elves, animals ...

Spencer changed his clothes many times, always with his huge multicolour galley , and, when surprisingly a rabbit came out and ran away, all the children ran behind it.

Jack caught it and returned sweaty, happy, shouting:

-Look, Dad !My new pet!

-You shall not be able to have it with you at the boarding school, Jack, I think, -said Aaron

'-No, but you will care for it for when I come back in the winter holidays ..

Spencer had disappeared again, to wear the last costume of the night.

The old man Welsey, who had laughed like a child again, approached to Aaron and put a hand on his shoulder.

'-It's a pity that the Dutchman has lost the consider myself a hermit, but he won that kind ... away.

-Dutch? What Dutch?- Aaron asked, without much interest, but somewhat choppy.

-The man living in the miserable hovel placed downtown. He has the perfect type of the "rare one".He came about three months here, I think from Buenos Aires, and, although not a Dutchman by birth, everyone calls him so, because he wants to be called so.

Aaron did not ask anything more, and that was when Spencer made his triumphal appearance.

The children chanted an endless "Oooooh!". While Aaron turned ,he froze to be suddenly paralysed: he could not believe what he was seeing.

That picture was silhouetted against the light of the huge fire under the dark sky saturated of stars and a moon almost ferocious ... No. .. it was not possible ... So ... that was the containing in that famous box ?

High boots style sixteenth century ;the tightest pants, made by black silk; a leather jacket of the same colour;a beautiful dark green shirt, with wide sleeves; a belt with silver buckle;a Spanish hat with feather plume, and one sword in his hand…

Spencer had darkened hair (maybe with ashes?), and he was wearing false mustache and looked like a gentleman of thirds in Spain ..

Seen against the light, although he was thinner and infinitely more beautiful, and his eyes, especially were powerfully different ... God !In the view backlit, he was like a parody of ...

Aaron would not stop screaming desperately .,,, but warned his terrible embarrassment,and he (anyone would have noticed, but nobody was looking) approached him, bottle of gin in hand:

-Is there something wrong, Don Aaron?

-No, nothing, nothing .. Please ... leave me alone ...

("And there, facing the sea, I realised how much we had been manipulated." ..)

("We were his robots, his automata, his puppets ...")

Aaron turned away from the group around children, walked to the lighthouse, and sat on a rock, his eyes lost in the dark waters of the Atlantic, smoking, with the bottle of gin at his side.

He was waiting….

….

After the party, Jack looked for his father, and not finding him among the people, he went to sleep at his good friend Diego's house, the son of the small store's owner .

They had many things to talk about, and then there was "Wonderland", the rabbit!

He was assured that his dad would pick him up the next day; also the good uncle Spencer (now disguised as a swordsman of novel) had given him permission.

-Maybe Dad has felt bad, because he has remembered mom, or that bad man who hurt him.. ... or "before" ...

Spencer asked Welsey by Aaron,quite worried. The Englishman said he had gone to the lighthouse for a while, but then headed to the other end of the village,totally drunk.

-Aaron ... we've worried about you..Your son, I, ... everyone in the town was worried about you. .. What has happened?

Aaron lifted up his eyes in mourning, and looked at him with a consuming hatred over the waters of that sea blackened night.

-Go, damn !-he said, biting the words, and in every word, each of the letters-Go, get out of my sight and my life! You won't manipulate me, like you did with the others!

-Too late. -it said a calm freezing voice behind him, in English-Too late, my dear Dr. Hotchner.

Aaron turned..Before him, it was the one which was called the Dutch, and that was just another ghost: tall, thin, wiry, with a shaggy gray beard that hid just

a face that was horribly familiar .Monstruosly familiar.

-Van Houten ...? ...

-The same who wears these clothes and shoes ,and who is wielding the weapon that shall kill you, my dear doctor.

The gray haze of alcohol gave way to the awareness of one unique certainty: that of knowing that he would die in that hidden place , killed by a ghost, manipulated by his own nightmares.

Reid stepped forward without fear:

-We are unarmed -he said-. It would be uneven, and you've always presumed to be a man of honour.

Van Houten pointed them (when not!),with a special 38 Eibar, similar as those both sadly already known,, .. ("but .. not that there were only two equal?")

That was almost lethal as anything else.

-Now you know the truth- Frank smiled -I was the one who sent those letters.I pretended ,I simulated those crimes, detail after detail, and appropriated them to make David Rossi receive them .. At this point in life, it is much easier to simulate than to commit. I had two powerful allies: the desire for revenge dictated by Rossi's love-hate-love and by his wounded and mocked pride ,and his meridional blood. I knew that, despite who he was, and despite his famous rationality so uncompromising, David Rossi would act, this time, impulsively.

There was a long pause that was summarized in an equally long sigh of weariness and hatred .Then,Frank continued:

-When – he chewed-speaking letters, syllabes, one by one, licking them - "I has disintegrated my bones, presumably in a barrel of acid," asccordingly to the FBI's ridiculous report…He.. ... Gideon…the beast! ... and I ... made a pact .A secret one..He would facilitate me a flight from the country if I promised,if I swore to do not bother all of you nevermore.I accepted…but I actually wanted something else…. I loved him, and I hatred him so much as I had loved,so he was my trophy,the sole prize I wanted !- he shouted -Many years ago (thirty five years ago!), that bastard left me to go away with the Italian, and then betrayed me haughtily, joining those ones who were destined to hunt , I swore to myself that it would take the finest vengeance .

He paused, and pointed a finger at Reid:

-You know it well, truly, Dr. Reid?.-he laughed, with a sinister laughter whose blackness was darkest than the more voracious sea-You've known him,Gideon,, like me, ... 'biblically ... I mean ... carnally ... in the biblical sense ... right?

It was not enough to keep the tension of waiting in which one dies not once but ten, a hundred, a thousand times, but Frank wanted to increase further torture, using that confidential tone, perhaps intimate, to prolong the agony, perhaps indefinitely.

-No need to ponder the answer from you, Dr. Reid: I know it can be uncomfortable-he glanced at Aaron -.. But how it has not noticed by you( by a genius like you!),that everything he touched was destined to perish, inevitably, in a terrible and tragic way ? He carried the misfortune to any place where he was going: he betrayed my loyalty, because he was born doomed.

-That is fatalism-Reid said, in a tone that was the calmest in the world-He told me it , yes.. His sentence was exactly this: "I was born corrupt." And I said I was now I can see the truth, and you're right, Frank.,no doubt..

Aaron, despite the awfulness of the situation, felt that his whole being was filled with joy: Spencer was back to his usual self, trying to establish a current empathetic power with the monster, and he argued with him, pretending to be seduced by his words .

-I do not understand this at all- Spencer continued –Why Aaron, if the one involved in this story was I, myself?.

-The head is always responsible for what each member brings to -Frank Van Houten ,suddenly,he jumped:.

-Who killed him? You, Dr. Reid?

Spencer nodded, hesitated a moment, then said, gently:

-It was assisted suicide ... I….

The raucous laughter interrupted him:it was an animalistic laugh, which guessed a savage joy.

-Assisted suicide! Now they call it so! -he spat on the ground-I congratulate you, my dear .. You freed the world of one of its more vile slag..And,by the way… what happened to the Italian?-he laughed again-It was an .." unassisted suicide"?-he laughed harder.

-Hhe died of a ruptured aneurysm-third Aaron,approaching to him,very slowly.

-Did he suffer?.

-Probably he did not feel anything..He was sleeping ...

-No, no ... Him .. the monster ... Gideon…did he suffer?

-As wounded and cornered beasts do- Reid said, and his words were unusually cruel-He suffered worse than an animal does in the slaughterhouse.. He drank a mixture of poisons, and, as the effect was not as immediate as he expected ...

-You did help him..-interrupted Van Houten, happy-Good,very good…..but I had left him to suffer further.

-Do not think that I was not tempted to do it,too-Reid said, smiling.

-I would have let him die of cirrhosis, breaking himself in an outburst,as a balloon- Aaron interjected .

Van Houten could not stop smiling.

Go-go! I see you both finally knew what that bastard was doing with your lives,with your entire existences ... You fell on account of the way that he was manipulating everyone and everything-. he sighed –Good! Anyway, I can not let you live anymore.I'm so sorry , really, but nothing that he touched, used, loved, shaped, directed, inspired, etc, etc ... must be standing on the surface of earth..

Frank took away, just a few steps back, and pointed decidedly to the center ,and up:

-A single shot, doctor will not hurt too much ...

Distracted by his dialogue with Spencer, Van Houten did not see that Aaron, obeying an instinct perhaps inveterate, slowly let himself fall to the ground, crawling on the sand to catch his feet.

There was a shot ,that ended up in the air, because Aaron took Van Houten clinging to his ankles, dropped him, and perhaps remembering what he did not want to remember, launched a brutal flood of punches that did sprout a jet scarlet staining those untouched sands .A scarlet staining of violence and crime, certainly,was there ,in those sands, for the first time.

-Damn! –

shouted Van Houten, crazy-Damn!

Suddenly, Reid, who tried to separate them, while he was pointing Van Houten with the gun, but with a trembling hand,could hear footsteps and voices behind him.

Welsey was there with some men of the village, among them the Commissioner Rí was was a big man, dark, with a thick mustache and a deep voice of thunder:

-Stop, stop! Police!-he shouted, pointing with his gun.

Welsey was carrying a torch, and his old Mauser, "as old and as deadly as what happened at Verdun", as he put it everyday.

Among several ones managed, finally, to separate the two men.

Aaron muttered imprecations, sobbing gasps, and Foyet's name escaped from his lips in a faint howl that went unnoticed by everyone, but not for Reid.

Van Houten, whose condition was lamentable, was easily policemen dragged him to the lonely precinct, that never had received more prisoners than some tourists' thieves ,occasionally , and that, for the first time, would be the subject of a special attention by all the media in Montevideo, Buenos Aires ... and even further.

-It's over, has been completed yet- Reid said, hugging, caressing him,. Hugging him against his chest, crying himself, and heedless of the prying eyes of the local villagers..

-You ... did you know?-asked Aaron.

-Yes, I knew.-Spencer replied- I could just see him once, while walking through the boundaries of the already know that I cannot forget .. I carry the curse or maybe the blessing ... to own an absolute Hyper eidetic memory..Then,I thought these damn clothes (cursed grace that makes me to be wearing them now!) would make him come out of hiding and decididely attack us .I needed to have good witnesses, so that, finally, this monster would go with his bones to , if he fell dead as the result of our reply, for to make everyone know that it had been in legitimate defense I had discussed this with Welsey previously Welsey was the one who was always lurking, covering us,and pointing him,only few feet from here,. all the time.

The Englishman approached to them..His expression was more serious than the usual.

-I had flown his head .said.-Like one more head as many as I flew in my life.

Aaron had noticed long time ago that Welsey was not who he said he was, but he never asked intended to do it: not now, not ever.

….

That very night, before dawn, Spencer Reid lit a bonfire and threw on the clothes; the little black book; a portfolio that consisted largely in ornithology catalogs, results of observation of birds,;three volumes of poetry; several photographs , and a bulky folder containing a detailed list of all cases that they had followed during their years at the BAU, beneath the shadow of the beast.

And, while the fire consumed paper, cardboard and cloth, throwing sparks in which Spencer could read the remnants of hatred, misery and vice that a damn day he,Gideon, had inject into his own heart, wrapped in fantastic after he cursed himself a again for giving in to the needs of the flesh, that day in Combourg, and, finally , he swore himself washing his awareness of the manner whatever to clean all traces of so much pain and so much crime.

…..

CODA: (Same scenario,twenty years later…)

(Paganini, Concerto no. 4 - Adagio flebile and with sentimento) -.

They have passed, more or less, about twenty years.

Jack is now a man, and lives in Buenos Aires, graduating as a civil engineer with all he is not living alone: has either a young boy ,a young physician,otherwise nice and friendly, with often he visits them, when their duties allow.

Aaron along well his almost seventy years, except for diabetes, which has left no light in his eyes.

Spencer, true to his promise, has become his guide.

Every night there are long walks on the beach, talking about the things of the day, about Jack and his boyfriend, about who are still around,and about those who left, involving themselves in the sea of nostalgia.

Tonight, however, is even more special.

There is a fire, and the heat of those flames thatAaron cannot see anymore still warms his face and hands, while Spencer caresses his hair, all white, and opens himself friendly to confidence.

-My life-Hotchner says-, you have sacrificed yourself for me.

-It was and it is a pleasure, is what I want: I've chosen.

-I can ask if you still love me? And... Whether you loved me ever since the beginning?

Spencer smiles, though he knows, of course, that Aaron can not see it..

-Since before.

-Before? ...-Aaron laughs, like a child-Then…since that beating?

-Before.

Then Spencer tenderly embraces him, resting his head on Aaron's chest.

-There is no time, are only you and I….since the beginning, and forever.

Spencer closes the embrace, a night bird rubs the seawater with its flight, surreptitiously, and the tide with its ineffable tongue licks the foam on the sand.

And it's then, just then, when the blind man's night ,suddenly, is populated with stars.

(END OF "THE TOWER OF SILENCE")

(Thanks for reading and commenting ...) (THANKS FOR READING AND COMMENT)


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